WHO IS CORINNE?

I'm a native of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.  I have lived in central Pennsylvania, in northern Illinois, and in the North Quabbin region of western Massachusetts.  I worked as a librarian for more than 30 years, in a variety of schools and colleges and public libraries. I got a degree in outdoor teacher education along the way. I've been an independent scholar, writer, presenter, and outdoor educator since 2006. I am now based in north central Massachusetts.

Both Nature and writing have been important to me, for nearly as far back as I can remember. I used to spend hours in our large (to me) back yard in Suburban USA. I climbed the sugar maple behind the house. My parents set up a canvas tent for me to "camp" in. I was a Girl Scout for fourteen years, too, and spent two wonderful summers as a counselor at Camp Furnace Hills in Denver, Pennsylvania. These were happy and satisfying times. And their memories are what motivated me in later life to go for that outdoor ed degree.

My regular writing habit began in fifth grade, when I wove stories about a community of mice from my weekly lists of spelling words. This was the 1960s. When I hit high school in the 1970s, I started writing poetry. I got turned on to Henry David Thoreau by reading "Civil Disobedience" in tenth grade and Walden in twelfth, and he's been an influence in my life ever since. By the 1990s, I was writing book and video reviews. I wrote my first novel (still unpublished) in the five months following September 11, 2001. 2012 marked the release of my first book, Westward I Go Free:  Tracing Thoreau's Last Journey, by Green Frigate Books. My second, Henry David Thoreau for Kids: His Life and Ideas, With 21 Activities, was released by Chicago Review Press in 2016. I'm a member of The Thoreau Society. More projects are in the works.  What can I say?  I am always writing. And I often head outside for inspiration.