Margaret Willey

The Social Worker to Renata: "I noticed that there is a crow in each of your drawings. Is the crow another totem?"

Renata: "Crows symbolize bad luck, Mrs. Shield. I have had some very bad luck lately."

Renata to Mrs. Shield, the Social Worker: "I still dream about that hallway. I still see their terrible faces and still feel their angry thoughts around me. I feel how much they wanted to hurt me."

Renata to Nate: "Sometimes I see things that have already happpened. But it's kind of a jumble. It can be very noisy and confusing." She closed her eyes. "Please tell me that you believe me."

from FOUR SECRETS, Carolrhoda Lab, October 1


Illustrations by Bill Hauser  Read More 

Here are various topics that I have been sketching essays for: 10 Things You Didn't Know about Juvenile Detention, The Bullied Child as Hero, Bullies in Classic Literature about Growing Up, and Facing Up to your Inner Bully. This last one is based on my belief that we all engage in bullying behavior sometimes in the process of becoming adults and learning compassion. What's scary is how rarely adults reflect on their own guilt and cowardice when faced with the subject of bullying. Everybody has tough school memories: being bullied, observing bullying, ignoring routine cruelty, refusing to intervene out of apathy or fear. All stuff I am so interested in. Great summer project, along with writing autobiographical essays on the theme of various fairy tales that comforted me and freaked me out as a child.  Read More 

Discussion Guide recently created by Carolrhoda Lab for FOUR SECRETS:

see it here

These came in the mail while I was at Mothfest in Indiana, surprising me. Glossy and stark and bundled--hundreds of bookmarks. I think they are beautiful. Can't wait to hand them out--take one! take one!

Happy, happy at Moth Fest. All mothy and mothery.

To ease myself into a new project, I am tinkering with autobiographical essays that were in various states of incompletion--several just needing a solid conclusion, but conclusions are very hard for me. Finished one essay yesterday about loving the book HANS BRINKER by Mary Mapes Dodge when I was a young reader, using the  Read More 

This song is an anthem for one of the sisters in my short story collection, tentatively titled, HOW SHE LEFT. It is from my past, sung by the late great Sandy Denny in the 60's--I love it and my character loves it, plays it over and over--it  Read More 

What is there to say when you are writing the way I have been writing? There is no way to make it interesting--it is solitary, introspective, internal; it moves underneath ordinary life. All I can say about my work this month is that sentences are becoming paragraphs. Paragraphs are becoming pages. I am grateful  Read More 

Currently I am awaiting the galleys for FOUR SECRETS, also awaiting a response to my novel THE BEETLE BOY and working steadily on the short stories that will comprise the novel HOW SHE LEFT. January is proving to be a month during which I can write every day, even it it is only for  Read More