What books first influenced you as a child?Įvery Superman comic book from my dad's drugstore, and every Hardy Boy and Nancy Drew mystery in my small town's Carnegie Public Library––all of them leading me to Huckleberry Finn, To Kill a Mockingbird and then to the study of American Literature through college and beyond. The discovery and experience is described in the novel's Author's Note. (Want to see it? Go to West with Giraffes' webpage or click HERE + scroll down).

The travel writer in her was enraptured the creative writer was inspired. Her latest bestselling novel, West with Giraffes, was inspired by a forgotten true story she discovered about a hurricane-surviving pair of giraffes who were trucked crosscountry in little more than a tricked-out truck during the Great Depression turning heads, capturing hearts, and making 500+ headlines along the way. Currently, she lives with her husband and resident dog outside Austin, Texas. Her debut novel Faith Bass Darling's Last Garage Sale won the 2013 Writers League of Texas Novel of the Year and was adapted into a major French film starring Catherine Deneuve (French title: 'La Dernière Folie de Claire Darling') released in 2019 in France and around the world through 2020. Through those years, though, her creative writing was the place she played and dreamed, where she, as classic short-story writer Flannery O'Connor put it, could 'write to discover what I know.' She holds an MFA in creative writing, a BA and MA in American literature, and has won awards and residencies from the Illinois Arts Council, Writers League of Texas, Ragdale Foundation, Atlantic Center for the Arts, Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and Sewanee Writers Conference.

West with giraffes book