2026 Reading Challenge

Ask the Author: Barbara Mahany

“Of course I'll answer your questions. I'll circle back once a week at least to see what tickles your curiosities. Ask away.” Barbara Mahany

Answered Questions (3)

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Have read your book Slowing Time as it was a recommendation from the United Methodist Women's 2017 Reading Program in the Nurturing for Community category. As a result, I live in the Northern IL area and am on the Rockford District Leadership team. wondered if you do speaking for meetings of women and what your fee is? My email is joellarnmat @aol.com. Thank you for your consideration, Joella Warner
Barbara Mahany Dear Joella, First, thank you so much for asking, and, yes, I would be most interested. I am sending you an email right now.....
Best, Barbara
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How do you deal with writer’s block?
Barbara Mahany i practice the art of sitting down in the chair, scanning my imagination, and seeing what moment, what thought, carries some "electrical charge," and that's how i detect a moment worth diving into. but i might just as certainly simply live my life, and when some particular notion stirs me deeply, i know it's a moment that begs for exploring. since i was a journalist for such a long time, many of my writing is "on assignment," and that means i've done hours or days or weeks of reporting, and reading, and when i sit down to write i begin a methodical process of first combing through my notes, connecting dots, making outlines, then and only then do i begin to write. i'm blessed with not many moments of writer's block, and i mostly plow through the wall knowing there will come light on the other side.....
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Where did you get the idea for your most recent book?
Barbara Mahany it was a seed of an idea about eight years ago. i wanted to write a day book of wonder and the occasional wisdom. i kept writing, every single day before dawn for a year, then thrice weekly and twice weekly, and finally at least one essay a week. i called them meanderings as i scoured the landscape of the week, and plucked whatever held the deepest resonance. about two years ago, i started to sift through the stack and weave the essays into a whole. then i spent a summer writing the words that would stitch them together -- field notes for each month, a wonder list for each season, a blessed-be calendar of seasonal blessings, and even a recipe for each season (the book spirals across the arc of the year, from a winter to yet another winter). the essays are the heart of the book, but i poured my soul just as emphatically into the snippets and bits that stitch them together.
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Barbara Mahany
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