Kim Bancroft

After decades of teaching in high schools, colleges, and even in Mexico, I turned to living off grid in a small cabin in the woods of northern California in order to pursue writing and help others write their books. Ironically, at times I have to rely on oil lamps and candlelight in the deep of winter, much like my ancestors did, of whom I wrote in the book "Writing Themselves into History: Emily and Matilda Bancroft in Journals and Letters" (Heyday, 2022). What tales these women told of their lives in the 1860s to 1890s!

Also like my archivist and collector great-great-grandfather, H.H. Bancroft, founder of the Bancroft Library at UCB, I thrive on saving stories. I enjoy helping others think through how to make the most of old papers and letters, whether from ancestors or our own. What if everyone got to preserve their own story, and our stories were more precious than so many other things we consume? What will your descendants or others learn from your story?

I hope you'll read this book and be as fascinated as I was in researching it to find how differently these women lived through childbirth, childrearing, travels, doing oral histories, running a family business and so much more in the past. In the same way, how will our lives now be seen in 100 years?