Just The Facts Ma'am Bio

Day job: Advertising copywriter.

Night job: I write about where Mother Nature and human nature collide — in my backyard, my neighborhood and my mind, mostly.

Full Of Herself Bio

Hatched in Minnesota, I came East at 28 and began as a public relations writer in a large New England advertising agency. I was part of a creative team that won many awards and achieved outstanding results for client's publicity.

But I moved to the advertising copywriting side and began cobbling words together to differentiate clients and deliver even greater results.

Writing essays at night began during menopause as a futile attempt to stave off insomnia. Later, I wrote my way through the loss of two brothers, my sister and two close friends, all in the space of eight years. As loss piled on loss, I kept writing.

When my first person essay "Garden Vigilantes" was chosen for Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion website, that was all the encouragement I needed. I received two top national awards from the Garden Writers Association. One for Garden Vigilantes, which chronicles how quickly nurturers turn to killers, and for Mulch Madness, which observes some unlikely places mulch ends up. One judge said: “Mulch Madness was well-written, and made me laugh out loud."

Ode to a Broom appeared on the National Public Radio website. Berkshire Homestyle has featured many essays: On Clotheslines, Catholic vs. Lutheran Gardeners, The Lilacs Are Here, Wobbling Toward Vertical, to name just a few. I'm currently working on a book of essays about the eccentric behavior of gardeners.

My maiden name is Olson, but unlike the quiet reserved Norwegians, we sprouted from the boisterous branch. We were outcasts in a small Minnesota town, where very little is deemed funny, and you never talk about yourself. I come from a long line of storytellers. Most notable was my grandfather, Peter J. Falk, who dispensed gasoline and stories for 60 years on the corner of Highway 60 in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, and still found time to make moonshine and harass the local Mennonites. He was featured in both the book and the WCCO-TV special On the Road Again.

I graduated magna cum laude from two women’s colleges in Minnesota, The College of Saint Benedict and The College of Saint Theresa. I'm also an Advanced Master Gardener.

And I continue to work as an advertising copywriter for radio, direct mail, blogs, videos, Internet, you name it, in a variety of categories from hardware to education to destination marketing. I've written emails for George Carlin and audio scripts for John Lithgow.

I battle deadlines and woodchucks in Collinsville, Connecticut.