Creators in Residence application
About me and my creative practice
I come from a tradition of storytellers. My grandmother was born in Mississippi, one of ten children, and came north as part of the Great Migration. She was a wonderful oral storyteller, and some of my earliest understanding of narrative came from listening to her tell stories about her life and our family.
I became a different kind of storyteller. I studied English literature at Smith College and law at Cornell before eventually leaving legal practice to write full time. Over the past twenty years, I have written and published more than two dozen novels, primarily legal thrillers and romance, under several pen names. My work has reached more than 325,000 readers, and in 2025 I received the Mystery Writers of America Barbara Neely Scholarship.
Personal essays have been another part of my creative practice for years, from pieces published in Cleveland’s Plain Dealer and a local online publication to my current work on Substack. I also host and produce A Time to Thrill, a long-form podcast for which I have recorded more than 70 interviews with women writers and other creators. And I photograph city life—the architecture, streets, public spaces, and people that make a place distinctive.
Los Angeles has been my home for more than two decades. I have also had the opportunity to speak about my work at Los Angeles Public Library programs, including multiple appearances at the Studio City and Hyde Park Miriam Matthews branches and the Central Library, and was previously featured by LAPL as romance author Sylvie Fox. I spend part of each year in Budapest, and moving between the two cities has made me increasingly interested in how people experience place and what makes a city feel like home.
Writing, interviewing, and photography may seem like different practices, but to me they are versions of the same thing. I am interested in how people tell the stories of their lives, what they choose to remember, and what can be learned by paying close attention. Whether I am writing, interviewing someone, or making a photograph, my creative practice begins with observation and listening.
Proposed project: Patrons
About seven years ago, I was invited to speak at the Friends of the Huntington Beach Library’s Valentine Authors’ Tea. On that very rainy Saturday, I chose to talk about the role libraries played in my childhood—not simply as places where I found books, but as places where I found safety. I later memorialized that experience in an essay, “An Ode to Librarians: Books Saved My Life.”
My creative practice has always centered on telling stories. I now do that primarily through three media: I write novels and essays; I interview women creators for my podcast; and I photograph city life.
For the Creators in Residence program, I would like to bring those practices together in a project called Patrons.
Inspired by the oral-history tradition of Studs Terkel and the idea that everyone carries a story worth recording, Patrons would create a collective portrait of Los Angeles through the people who use its public libraries.
Working with LAPL staff and visiting branches throughout the city, I would meet and photograph library patrons and ask a deceptively simple question: What does the library mean to you?
Each encounter would become a short portrait combining photography with a written profile and, for selected subjects, recorded audio in the patron’s own voice. One person might come to the library to study. Another might bring a child to story time, use a computer to look for work, learn English, research family history, read the newspaper, find community—or simply find somewhere to be.
Individually, these would be small stories. Together, they would create a larger portrait of who uses the Los Angeles Public Library, why they come, and what a free public space can mean in the life of a city.
The resulting photographs, written portraits, and audio stories could live as a digital collection, with selected work presented through an exhibition or listening experience at the Library. Rather than documenting Los Angeles by photographing its landmarks, Patrons would document the city through the people who walk through the doors of its libraries every day.
The through line
About me: I grew up listening to someone tell me the story of her life. I’ve spent my creative life telling and listening to stories in different forms.
Patrons: Now I want Angelenos to tell me theirs.
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