Nancy Henderson-James

After spending her first two years in Tacoma and Aberdeen, Washington, Nancy Henderson-James lived the rest of her childhood years abroad in Portugal, Angola, and the former Southern Rhodesia. Schooling often required her to live away from her family with a variety of adults who substituted as parent figures. The experience shaped her and influenced how she faces the world.

Nancy graduated from Carleton College and received her library science degree at Pratt Institute. She worked as a high school librarian in Durham, North Carolina, where she has lived with her husband for forty-six years. She has two sons and four grandchildren who add in delightful ways to her sense of self. Nancy is the author of At Home Abroad: An American Girl in Africa, which was honored with the Reviewers Choice Award by Reader Views in 2010, and All My Parents: Seeking a Sense of Self in Family in 2020. Her essays have appeared in Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing Up Global and Writing Out of Limbo: International Childhoods, Global Nomads and Third Culture Kids.