Poet and writer for children and adults

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About

A “Michigander” most of her life, Elizabeth loves the wide-open views and neighborly friendliness that characterize the Midwest. She believes that nature can show us a great deal about both being and becoming, and she takes much of her inspiration from the wealth of its daily demonstrations. She enjoys writing poetry, prose, and essays for adults; and picture books, poetry, and middle-grade literature for children.

Elizabeth has an academic background in Psychology, Family Studies, Prevention, and Trauma and Loss in Children, plus 22 years’ experience running a large elementary school library. She is drawn to writing about the wonders of the outdoor world and our place within it, and the complex characters and relationships that exemplify the endearing, the difficult, the sacred, and the humorous sides of life. She is a gardener, a rock collector, an explorer, and a curious learner. She has never outgrown her four-year-old urge to ask, “Why?” and “How does it work?” of everything – and she loves the journey of looking for the answers to those questions!

She is a Fellow of the National Writing Project’s Red Cedar Writing Project, an Affiliate of the Amherst Writers and Artists, and a 2013 recipient of the Glen Arbor Art Association’s Artist in Residence Program, and a long-time participant in Professor Emeritus of Hope College, Jack Ridl’s “Landscapes of Poetry” workshop.

  • "...the writer's ending is, for the reader, always a beginning."
    — Krista Tippett
  • "I have come to love questions more than answers, for it is in our seeking that we are most alive, most open, most willing to come to new understanding."
    — Elizabeth S.E. McBride
  • "The expansiveness that comes from thinking someone else's thoughts and seeing through someone else's eyes is the chief gift bestowed by the written word."
    — Baba Brinkman
  • "...if you listen carefully, as you read, you'll hear a voice whispering to you gently: "you are not alone."
    — Samantha Cristoforetti
  • “What you read becomes part of your human adventure, the world you will make with your words and your life.”
    — Krista Tippett
  • “There is a sweetness in being blindsided by life, by truth, by a dark corner suddenly illumined. There is sheer joy in epiphany.”
    — James Calvin Schaap
  • “…we seek an enlargement of being…We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as our own.”
    — C. S. Lewis
  • “To write is to embark on a journey whose final destination we do not know. Thus, creative writing requires a real act of trust.”
    — Henri Nouwen
  • “Editing is when you get to play with someone in the sandbox of language.”
    — Joe Morgenstern
  • “We take great care with our words, for they are meant to get into our bloodstream.”
    — Richard Foster
  • “Cherish your curiosity. It is your questions that will shape you.”
    — David Delgado
  • “Every day I walk out into the world to be dazzled, then to be reflective.”
    — Mary Oliver
  • “Writing is a process in which we discover what lives in us”
    — Henri Nouwen
  • “Every secret of a writer’s soul, every experience of his life, every quality of his mind, is written large in his works.”
    — Virginia Woolf