Category Archives: Published Work

Reno/Tahoe Brings Home Gold!

David-Wise-Pipe-Laps-3.13.13–4

David Wise, photo courtesy Northstar California

The Olympics are over and I am very happy to report that the athletes for the Tahoe/Reno region did incredible! Maddie Bowman picked up a gold medal in the ski halfpipe, Julia Mancuso scooped up a bronze (to add to her collection of silver and gold) and David Wise won the gold in the freeski halfpipe. I was lucky enough to interview many of the Tahoe hopefuls in the TQ Winter feature, and profiled David in the 2013 TQ Ski & Ride issue. Here’s my interview with David, pre-gold medal:

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Mountain Home Articles

This West Shore home opens to breathtaking views of Lake Tahoe.

I just updated my site with some of my stories from the 2013 Mountain Home issue of Tahoe Quarterly. Feel free to browse about a family-minded home in Martis Camp (East Coast West), a modern Martis home that enjoys life at an angle (Skewed Spaces), a West Shore update to a home that had already been through several not-particularly-well-done remodels (Redesigning a Remodel), and a superbly crafted lakefront estate that owes its success to its owner’s involvement (West Shore Refinement).

In other Mountain Home news, I get to help sort through this year’s entries on Friday. Can’t wait to check out the latest and greatest in Lake Tahoe architecture and design!

Born to be Wild, from the Summer issue of Tahoe Quarterly

Summer in Tahoe means a spectacular display of colorful blooms: fields of yellow mule ears gazing at the sun, seas of blue lupine and orange poppies nodding in the wind.

More than 700 kinds of wildflowers grow in the region, according to Zephyr Cove resident Roger Rosenberger, wildflower expert and founder of http://www.wildflowerhikes.com. “It’s an endless palette, which, of course, makes it so interesting.”

Wildflower season typically begins in June and peaks in July and August; the season progresses uphill, so the best spots for end-of-season blooms are high, north-facing slopes. Continue reading

Library Love

tahoe blues library

I was at my library last week and, lo and behold, there was Tahoe Blues on the ‘featured reads’ section! It was so exciting to see a work that I participated in on the shelf, and I pointed it out to my toddler, who didn’t seem to care.

THEN, this past weekend, I was in Truckee to visit my friend Vanessa. We were poking into all the little shops and boutiques downtown (why couldn’t the cupcake store have opened while I still lived there?) and we wandered into a store called Bespoke. Again, I saw Tahoe Blues.

“Have you seen this?” Vanessa asked. “It’s a great little book; I was flipping through a friend’s copy the other week.”

When I showed her my byline, she was somehow even more excited than I was and bought a copy while announcing to the entire store that I contributed to the book. And, on that note, Bona Fide Books is looking for submissions for a follow-up to Tahoe Blues called Tahoe Sepia, a compilation of short, 1,000-word pieces chronicling the area’s past. It combines two of my favorite subjects, Lake Tahoe and history, so I’m very excited to start work on my submission!

TQ Winter 2012-13

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I’m belated, but the Winter issue of Tahoe Quarterly is on stands! It’s a great issue. I profile Truckee artist Annie Hooker, whose 1940s-era paintings deal with notions of nostalgia. There are some great stories, including a feature article dealing with the tenuous relationship between bears and humans in the Tahoe Basin, a gorgeous piece on different types of snowflakes and an article about people who ski every month of the year. These people are insane: One guy has been skiing every month for 18 years; another guy is my husband, who was on a 26-month streak at the time of his interview and is now pretty close to 30! Like I said, insane people!

Summer TQ

I recently got my Summer issue of Tahoe Quarterly in the mail! As you can see, my story “Painting with Picasso,” for which I interviewed artist Dave Russo, even made the cover lines, which I’m pretty proud of! This was a fun issue for me because I finally got back in the editing loop: For the first time about eight months, I found myself at the TQ office, red pen in hand, going line by line through the magazine. Editing was always one of my favorite duties at the magazine (besides writing itself), so it was nice to be back in my element. It’s a great issue, and I think Allison did an amazing job with the cover, so be sure to pick up a copy or subscribe online!

The Fourth Friend

Last night, I was part of a reading of Tahoe Blues at Reno’s Sundance Books (which is, by the way, an incredibly cool bookstore that I wish I had known about earlier!). Kim Wyatt, the publisher, talked a little about the book: She had received more than 200 submissions and only included 60 from 56 different authors. Because of the vast range of topics (memoirs, romance, nature, apocalyptic futures and ghosts), the book is categorized by shades of blues, and ranges from the lighter “Powder Blue” chapter all the way to the deep “Midnight.” My story, The Fourth Friend, finds itself heading toward the darker end scale at Ultramarine. Besides myself, writers Mark Maynard, Margaret Elysia Garcia, Joan Atkinson and Dana Arlien also spoke. Anyway, a lot of fun to be a part of the event, and very cool to see my name in a published anthology! Lots of good reading in here, so I encourage you to grab a copy through the Bona Fide Books website.

Tahoe Blues

Early copies of Tahoe Blue are in and I hear it looks fabulous! I couldn’t make an event last week at South Lake Tahoe’s Bona Fide Books, so unfortunately missed picking up my copy early. However, there’s going to be an event in Reno on June 20 at 6:30 p.m. at Sundance Books. I will definitely be in attendance and you should be too! If you can’t make the event, feel free to pre-order the book (official release date is June 8) from Bona Fide here.

TQ Best of Tahoe 2012

I was in Truckee last week so I stopped by the Tahoe Quarterly offices and picked up the Best of Tahoe issue. As always, beautiful photography and great articles! I’ve got a couple of bylines in the issue: I wrote a piece about the Squaw Valley Institute, which is a very cool speaker series that occurs monthly, another story about some of the best museums and cultural sites around Reno/Tahoe (to include stops ranging from South Lake Tahoe’s Explore Tahoe to Reno’s National Automobile Museum and Children’s Discovery Museum) and lastly, a small piece for the Arts Department about UNR’s Peter Goin, a photography and videographer who specializes in the Nevada landscape. Grab a copy on stands or subscribe here!

TQ Winter 2011-12


I’ve been pretty busy the past few weeks and not great with updates: The Washoe fire ended up coming much too close for comfort, so we evacuated up to Incline Village. However, between smoke inhalation and anxiety, I ended up in the ER and was pretty sick for about a week. Since then, I’ve had a couple of projects going on with the house (I could not live with the brown bathroom any longer), am trying to get back into Bikram yoga and have spent an inordinate amount of time reading and rereading Elmo’s Animal Alphabet to Nora. I did not expect my reading material to change so much with parenthood!

Anyway, I finally got my copy of the Winter 2011-12 Tahoe Quarterly! This is the first issue that I haven’t worked on and it was surprising pleasurable to enjoy the articles as a reader and not as an editor (although, who am I kidding, I can’t read a cereal box with a little mental editing!). I wrote a Valley View piece about the children’s Discovery Museum that opened in downtown Reno (and Nora’s got a cameo appearance in the story) and a Well-Being piece about the new Cancer Center that is opening in Truckee in the coming months. There are some interesting reads, including a piece about the Squaw Valley/Alpine Meadows merger, one about the High Fives Foundation and another about the Woodward camp opening at Boreal (which I used to attend in Pennsylvania for gymnastics). And of course, always gorgeous photography, so grab a copy if you get the chance.