What:
I write both fiction and nonfiction. I’ve written stories since I was a young child to my stint as high school yearbook editor. In high school I wrote a fiction column for the school paper. That was my first real venture into characterization and dialog.
After a career as an editor and PR director, I’m now a columnist in Western North Carolina and enjoy ten minutes of fame every other Tuesday. I’m also an avid genealogical researcher and a Road Scholar speaker for the NC Humanities Council.
Why:
A childhood dream was to live a life like the Joan Nash character in Please Don’t Eat the Daisies. She wrote articles from home in the country or small town, I’m not sure which. She had children and a shaggy dog and enjoyed capturing life in her stories. It looked like fun. I feel fortunate that I’ve become her in some ways.
How:
Inspiration comes nearly every day: snippets of conversation, a discovery. My style is small-town. A friend recently described my work with the column as over-the-fence chats. Back when I was writing food pieces for a food blog for the NPR affiliate in Charlotte, the editor described my work as “highbrow/ lowbrow.” My pieces about home canning, lunch meat and boxed mac and cheese took their place beside explorations of gourmet fare.
I often see stories and essays through odd connections—little coincidences—that beg to be recorded. And, I must always have to have a bigger project percolating.
Bio:
Tamra Wilson grew up in Central Illinois but has lived in North Carolina for 40 years. A graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism, she has worked as a reporter, business writer, magazine editor and PR director. At midlife she branched into fiction and has published in more than a dozen anthologies and dozens of journals including storySouth, Crossroads: A Southern Cultural Annual, North Carolina Literary Review, Epiphany and The MacGuffin.
She is a two-time recipient of a Regional Artist Project Grant sponsored by the NC Arts Council and local affiliates She has earned fellowships from Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Vermont Studio Center. She has published a story collection, Dining with Robert Redford (Little Creek/JCP) and, with playwright/novelist Elizabeth Searle, co-edited Idol Talk: Women Writers on the Teenage Infatuations That Changed Their Lives (McFarland) released in 2018. Her MFA is from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine.
Tamra lives near Newton, NC with her husband and two dogs.
Links:
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Linda K. Sienkiewicz is the author of the award-winning novel In the Context of Love, a story about one woman’s need to tell her truth without shame.
2017 New Apple Book Awards Official Selection
2016 Sarton Women’s Fiction Finalist
2016 Eric Hoffer Book Award Finalist
2016 Readers’ Favorite Finalist
2016 USA Book News Best Book Finalist
“…at once a love story, a cautionary tale, and an inspirational journey.” ~ Bonnie Jo Campbell, author of National Book Award Finalist, American Salvage
“With tenderness, but without blinking, Linda K. Sienkiewicz turns her eye on the predator-prey savannah of the young and still somehow hopeful.” ~ Jacquelyn Mitchard, author of the #1 NY Times Bestseller,Deep End of the Ocean
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