Writer, editor, person who makes cakes.*
*Also a teacher and a capitalist drone, but around here we like to follow the rule of three and the cakes insisted on staying.
Hi! I’m Anne – a teacher, writer, and editor living in northwest Washington. My first memoir, Navel Gazing, was published in the UK in 2013 by Faber&Faber, and I’m currently in the last revision stages on my second.
My beats are primarily: relationships (especially heartbreak/healing), body image, and mental health – if writing about it requires radical vulnerability, I’m probably game. You can read some of my work via the links on my portfolio.
When I’m not writing or working at my day job, I can usually be found (and often witnessed, on Instagram) trying to figure out how to be a homeowner/gardener; loving/hating on my step-cat, Bismarck; and baking/cooking all sorts of delicious foods (and some less-delicious failures).
Care to get more personal than that? Buy the book! And/or keep reading.
. . .
What’s in a name: Those of you who studied the Salem witch trials in school may have read a little Arthur Miller play called The Crucible, which features an especially hideous character named Goody Ann Putnam. If you haven’t read the play, I recommend it, as it’s brilliant – it also may help certain confused (and sometimes snarky) folk understand why I added the ‘H’ to my name. Four years of middle school classmates addressing me as ‘Goody Putnam’ was plenty; it was time for a change.
Likes: Animals, baking, seeing movies at the theater (that’s a serious indulgence these days, especially if you’re a $9-popcorn junkie like me!)
Dislikes: Severe allergy to animals, inability to eat all the baked goods without consequences, needing my glasses to see a subtitled film/read on-screen letters etc.
. . .
To read the excerpt of Navel Gazing that was published in the 2011 City University Creative Nonfiction Anthology, click the jacket image in the sidebar.
For a more in-depth dig through the workings of my post-GB mind and body, check out my body image blog, My Earlobes Still Feel Fat.
If you’re curious about my baking/cooking (mostly baking) life, you can get some of my favorite recipes and read about some of my most fantastic failures on my (much-neglected, lately) food blog, Linzers in London.
You can also work with me one on one if you’re looking for an editor or book coach – I’d love to learn more about your project!