Welcome
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About Me
I was asked once in a writing group what I would list on my tombstone if I could use only eight words. I chose “Deborah Grace: Life of Verdant Yearning, Letters, Love and Lasagna." My hope with my writing is to shine light on the commonalities between all peoples, the communion available in every moment, to present life as a shimmy and a shindig. If I could describe myself in seven words all starting with "s", I would chose spoon, shore, spore, screech, sacrum, strum and song. I aspire to sashay and surrender.
I have always loved personal stories and read primarily memoir, books are among my closest friends. I savor and share them, gobble, gorge. I write as an anthem, alchemizing love, desire, mothering and living a create life, as well as the bliss and blunder of the world around me. I write to kindle the sacred stirrings in us all. I offer a weekly poem on my website, as well as book collections of poetry and memoir.
Explore with me! Let’s carpool to the collective unconscious, let’s caravan to our most sacred selves where we can heal and hope anywhere, anytime.
My Books
My books are self-published little nuggets, like children they take some time to raise (a good year from stem to stern)! From the margins to the text font, the cover color saturation to the amount of space per line, I love every niggling detail. The only things I outsource are some tech help from a teenager or two, whoop ass editing from trusted sources and printing from CreateSpace, an Amazon company, who makes dreams come true. What that means for you, my dear reader, is you are supporting a home grown, down and dirty DIY endeavor. Bless you!
Memoirs
Annual Collections
WHEN YOU BUY MY BOOKS
You allow shampoo, toothpaste, potatoes—
home fries cooked up on my stove top
and potatoes reconfigured,
tater tots purchased with lunch money,
bobby pins for my daughter’s copper colored hair.
She will lose them, you will buy them again,
as well as dental care and gum repair,
kale for green smoothies.
Local eggs from the egg lady,
who has a make-shift plastic coop.
Some evenings I drive by and see
fluffed silhouettes roosting, imagining I am a fox.
Perhaps one day you are an unknowing partner
in a brick and mortar hen house.
If you buy enough books,
you gift me a massage at an asian foot massage palace,
a large tip for the girl making minimum wage.
In each season, you bestow a bouquet of one flower—
purple iris, tulips, sunflowers, lily white narcissus.
In the fall, a pumpkin to sit on my stoop,
in winter, a rosemary tree to enhance my entry.
You purchase these at the farmer’s market
and place a dollar in the hat of a street poet.
You help me say yes to Doctors Without Borders,
yes to clothes made from bamboo that feel like silk
and silk, but still secondhand,
cello and saxophone lessons,
thermostat set at 68 instead of 67,
tuition for a kid who wants to build gardens.
On a Saturday night,
you score me a Blue Moon beer and a five dollar cover,
bogeying with a band of musicians out of Wenatchee,
you buy a song on their CD
and two ridges of their washboard.
You procure paper and a factory where paper is bound,
you pony up for ink and cardboard boxes,
a truck and a truck driver’s wages.
Dear Patron,
you join the ranks of all enablers—
midwives, money lenders, grant writers.
You are the Earthly Endower of the Arts,
with each purchase you provide more than you know.
More than any object or sundry sustenance,
you gift me honed, honeyed hours
to put into practice what I tell others
plumb the heart of the world,
share what you come up with.
Photo by Cari Hernandez
For You
Once a week(ish) (most week)s, I offer a weekly poem.
They are sometimes my attempts to metabolize world events, might be new take on a holiday tradition or a celebration of the way spring birdsong undoes me. Most often they are offerings about love and family, spirituality and nature, about having a body and hope. These are unpublished poems that are compiled into a yearly collection each January(ish).
I also share some prose pieces, akin to the “Read Me” ones on this website and excerpts from upcoming books and oh a wee bit of promotion, letting you know about new books. I consider email inboxes sacred and would be honored to show up in yours.
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