Betty J. Cotter

My Swamp Yankee childhood forms the basis of most of my fiction, including Roberta's Woods (set in the remote Escoheag, Rhode Island, in a house like my grandmother's) and The Winters (set on the Rhode Island coast). The quaint mannerisms and speech, the loss of the land, the family secrets and tragedies of these people - the Thayers, Crandalls, Woodmansees, Cooks, Wilcoxes, etc. - stewed around in my mind for years before I began writing fiction seriously at age 40. Prior to that, I wrote four photo histories for Arcadia Publishing's Images of America series, also set in Rhode Island. In 2006 an excerpt from The Winters was chosen by the R.I. State Council on the Arts as the first-prize winner in its fellowship competition. Today I have an MFA in writing from the Vermont College of Fine Arts (2009) and teach writing to both adults and University of Rhode Island undergraduates. The Winters is available in ebook format and paperback, and I have a third novel, about a country doctor who loses his license to practice medicine, which is in draft form. My next project is a memoir, tentatively titled A Swamp Yankee's Daughter.