Hello and Welcome!

Hello and Welcome to Audacious Women, Creative Lives!

Join 10,000+ subscribers in this vibrant, growing community.

Hi! I’m Anne. I left academia and life as an empty-nester to pursue my dream of travel and being an actual, real, full-time writer—finally, at the age of 52!

On the Seine, in Paris for Christmass

I share inspiring stories of women writers and artists who made bold choices, bucked convention, or simply lived and wrote outside the lines.

I also offer support and guidance to those who want to make a leap, of any distance, into a bolder, more creative life.

What is This Community About?

The premise is simple: women writers and readers thrive in supportive communities. We learn from each other. We grow bolder. We gain the strength to go against what is expected of us.

And we learn from the women who’ve gone before us. “We think back through our mothers, if we are women,” Virginia Woolf wrote. Or as Muriel Rukeyser wrote in her great tribute to the aritst Käthe Kollwitz, “my lifetime / listens to yours.”

Audacious Women, Creative Lives is a place for inspiration, conversation, and exploration.

What You Will Get When Your Subscribe:

Every Saturday morning, you will receive an email in your inbox with one of the following (on a rotating basis):

• Life 2.0 posts about what I’ve learned on my journey to a more creative, fulfilled life

  Life 2.0: What I've Learned

  Life 2.0: Becoming a Person on Whom Nothing is Lost

• Posts about changing your life, offering advice or telling you my story:

  Two Years Ago I Quit My Life

  I Want to Change My Life. Where Do I Start?

• Stories of woman writers or artists who dared to break the rules:

  Two Audacious Women Writers Who Made Me Want to Change My Life

  Suzanne Valadon Broke All the Taboos

• Discussion Posts, where you are invited to join a more in-depth conversation.

• In each email, you will be invited to join the conversation in the comments section at the end.

• You will also be part of a growing community that allows us all to connect more and learn from each other.

More About Me and Why This Newsletter Is Important to Me

I always wanted to be a writer, but I didn’t know how. So I became an academic, studying the women who had managed to do it. I read about their successes and failures, their efforts to overcome the taboos against women taking up the pen, their difficulties gaining the attention of the male literary elite.

I wrote three books about women writers, as well as editing four others. It was a fulfilling career as a researcher and teacher. I loved teaching classes with titles like “The Stories of Women’s Lives” and “Scribblers and Mad Geniuses.”

But I wasn’t really living the life that I wanted to live. I was afraid. Of so many things.

Then I got sick (with Meniere’s, an autoimmune disorder). I learned I was carrying decades of stress in my body. My body was telling me that I had to free myself from my very stressful life in order to survive. (I knew in my bones that if I stayed, I’d end up with cancer, like my father and brother, or a growing cascade of autoimmune disorders that plague women, in particular, who have lived with chronic, unpredictable stress.)

So in 2022, I packed my bags when my daughter went off to college, and I hit the road. I traveled around Europe for a year in search of a new life. (You can read about it in earlier posts, when this letter was called “Letters from Anne.”)

Here I am sitting at the dining table where Jane Austen often sat, at Chawton House, the home of her brother, just up the road from her own home, one of the many stops I made during my year of travel.

I was inspired by a slew of fabulous women writers who had left the U.S. in search ways to live as women writers outside of convention. I am currently writing a memoir about that year and the women writers who carried me through.

A writing project on its own is tremendously satisfying, but it’s missing one important thing: community. Writing is terribly lonely, if you let it be. I already had a newsletter about my writing and research on women writers. During my year of travel, it became more about my life and the places I explored. It was often a lonely life, and the responses from my readers became a lifeline for me.

What Readers Are Saying

“Your latest post really hit a nerve! The pressures of housekeeping! I immediately took myself out to dinner. . . . I have a writing project that I’m struggling with too. Your adventures are inspiring!” – Robin

“I have found a lot of inspiration in your writing and I love the generosity you extend to other Substack writers.”—Lisa

“I identify with your journey and long to hear how it unfolds. To me it represents lost opportunities , courageous decisions and self actualisation.”—Elizabeth

“Your writing in every genre is invariably rich, elegant, and important.”—Sheila

“Anne, What an inspiring journey you're going through. I've been feeling so hungry for hearing "real stories" of women forging their own path and discovering themselves (and all the complexity such endeavour entails!) - and I found your page! I really hope you continue to share your thoughts and lessons with us - such wisdom. Thank you for letting us embark on it with you!”—Pamela

“You inspire me to think of my life as a journey that is far from complete!”—Etta

“I’ve really loved reading about your travels and sojourns through writing, solitude, and the significance of women writing. I write on similar topics and love to find a kinship in the work of other writers.”—Freya

“Such an adventure you are on, Anne. Glad to have a way to feel a part of it. I appreciate your ability to bring a depth of focus to what catches your attention.” –Peggy