Francis O’Roark Dowel Lecture: Turning Quilts into Stories: My Life as a Quilter Who Writes (Zoom)
Frances O’Roark Dowell (https://francesdowell.com/) began her writing career as a children’s book author and has published over twenty-five novels for young readers, including Dovey Coe, The Secret Language of Girls Trilogy and Then a House Fell on Her Head (all with Atheneum Books for Young Readers/Simon & Schuster). She first combined her love of storytelling and quilt making in her 2016 novel Birds in the Air, followed by the short story collection, Margaret. Goes Modern. Her most recent quilting novel is Friendship Album, 1933. She is the host of the Quiltfiction/Story Guild podcast and has written about quilts for magazines such as Quiltfolk, Quilting Arts, QuiltCon Magazine, Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting, and Curated Quilts. A long-time member of the Triangle (NC) Modern Quilt Guild and a board member of the Quilt Alliance (a nonprofit organization that serves to document quiltmakers and their stories), Frances lives, writes, and makes quilts in Durham, NC.
Lecture description: An award-winning children’s book author, Frances O’Roark Dowell began making quilts in 2007. The more quilts she made, the more she wanted to make up stories about them—stories for quilters, that is. Her first quilt novel, Birds in the Air, was published in 2016, followed by the short story collection, Margaret Goes Modern. In 2018, she began hosting the Quilt Fiction podcast (now The Story Guild podcast), where she reads her works-in-progress and interviews other quilters who write, including Marie Bostwick, Marianne Fons, and Jennifer Chiaverini. In this presentation, Frances will share her quilts and quilt stories, talk about her latest novel, Friendship Album, 1933, and might even encourage you to write a quilt story of your own!