About Lee Ann
I was born and raised in Indiana, which is where my novel, The Pie Window, takes place. After graduating from Indiana University with a degree in Business, I spent several years working in corporate banking. My writing consisted primarily of complicated emails and a humorous annual Christmas letter that has become a favorite of family and friends.
Once I retired, I happily dove back into more creative work. Not that emails and Christmas letters aren’t creative, but they don’t present the same challenges that come with bringing a character to life and taking that character on a journey. Along with fiction, I’ve found that personal essays help me make sense of the world and my own journey through it.
In addition to The Pie Window, I’ve ghostwritten a business management book and written several short pieces you can find on Medium. Two of my essays have been awarded Honorable Mentions and made the top 25 in the Writer’s Digest Personal Essay Awards Contest.
I’ve taken writing classes with UCLA Extension and Writer’s Digest, and through those connections am part of a wonderfully diverse and treasured writers group. April Dávila’s Mindful Writing Community has become an indispensable source of inspiration and camaraderie, for which I’m grateful.
I am a passionate volunteer for NAMI, the National Alliance on Mental Illness. I’ve lived in Southern California for almost 40 years, and I spend time in Indiana, so I consider myself to have dual citizenship!
The Why
My high school English teacher introduced me to Emily Dickinson, and I was forever found. I’m sure if Emily had been in my class, we would have been best friends, eating lunch at the nerd table and sharing our poems, written in pink ink in little notebooks with flowers on the front. Reading Dickinson, I felt seen. She used poetry in ways I couldn’t have imagined, but that rang devastatingly true.
Since then, I’ve puttered with words and used them to create stories that bring my personal experiences to life. Whether that’s through fiction, essay, or humor, I love the challenge of creating interesting narratives.
Retirement from corporate world allowed me to re-open the door to a writing life. For years, I put away my words and phrases, and now they are begging to come out and play. I am intrigued by the unseen in ordinary people, and I strive to breathe life into the details that others might overlook.
The Pie Window is a long time coming. I wrote the first draft fifteen years ago and picked it up again once I retired. It’s a love letter to the women in my family, women who never saw themselves as anything but ordinary, but whose deep love for family and commitment to survival got them through some pretty harrowing times. Women to whom I owe enormous debts for the sheer fact of my existence.
I owe it to them to try and get this story out into the world. And I owe it to myself. And I probably owe it to Emily Dickinson, too, so please read it for her sake if nothing else.