HAPPENINGS
PRIME – July 2014
AGAWAMLUNCHTIME LYRICS
Lunchtime Lyrics with local folk artist Corlene Roberts returns for...
click for more
|
| |
| | The writing life |  | |
PRIME – July 2014
After two successful novels, Michele Barker follows her dream careerBy Debbie Gardner
debbieg@thereminder.com
At 54, East Longmeadow author Michele Barker is finally following her passion to write novels as a full-time career.
"I had wanted to write fiction when I was a kid and wrote stories for myself and friends," Barker told PRIME over coffee at the Shelburne Falls Coffee Roasters on Shaker Road in early June.
As high school drew to a close however, she put away those dreams.
"Not many people make a living as a novelist," she said.
Instead, she pursued degrees in English and history, graduating from the college of Our Lady of the Elms in 1981. A few years later, she added a Master's degree in historical preservation from the University of Vermont to her credentials.
Jobs with Merriam Webster, the city of Chicopee, Sturbridge Village and the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum (now the Springfield History Museum) filled her work life.
But her desire to write was never completely extinguished. Barker started dabbling in fiction again, taking courses at local community colleges in the early 1990s and submitting her short stories to the East Longmeadow Library's Homegrown writing contests from 1997 to 2000.
"I won a couple of years; it was very encouraging," she recalled.
About that same time she joined a writing group, where her responses to the facilitator's suggested writing prompts planted the seeds for her first full-length fiction. Those writing exercises eventually evolved ...
click for more
|
| |
|
