Join us for a celebration of the publication of Peggy Ann Barnett's sweeping historical novel, Bitter Fruit! Q and A, reading and signing.
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More about Peggy:
Peggy Ann Barnett is an author, photographer, and poet.
“I grew up in Queens, New York and was raised in a home defined by the Holocaust. Reading and the visual arts were always a refuge for me. After a public education at P.S. 89, and Music and Art High School, The Cooper Union for Science and Art encouraged me to pursue a creative career in photography.
My photography studio was in Manhattan on 22nd Street, just down the block from the Flatiron Building. I worked there with my husband Ron. Eventually there was my daughter Emma. There were magazine assignments in the 1970’s, corporate annual reports for the Fortune 500 in the 1970- 80’s, stock photography for The Image Bank, and lots of creative assignments from great designers. In 1978, I purchased the nine-story commercial loft building in which my studio was located and turned it into residential apartments— I was one of the first to do this in New York; it took four years of aggravation, construction and renovation, and an endless amount of time persuading people it was a viable investment.
All the while, I wrote poetry. Working with words uses a totally different part of the brain than working with a camera, but it makes my poetry very visual, full of images that express my emotions. After moving to the Pacific Northwest in 2006, I published my poetic memoirs called On Your Left! It describes what it was like growing up in Queens, my marriage to Ron, and the shock of moving from the Big Apple to what, at first, seemed to be another country.
For five years I attended meditation with Thai Monks of the Forest at the Atammayatarama Monastery in Woodinville, Wa. After two years of classes studying the Dhamma with Abbott Ajahn Ritthi, I earned my Secondary Level Certificate of Dhamma Study from the Thai Royal Ecclesiatical Board of Education. Studying the writings of Ajahn Chah helps me find equanimity in life’s turmoil.
Bitter Fruit is my first novel. The early Middle Ages have always fascinated me. I spent many contented hours in The Cloisters, part of the medieval section of Metropolitan Museum of Art in Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. I love wandering around old castles and medieval cities. In the Cluny museum in Paris, I sat for hours contemplating the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries.
Bitter Fruit happened because of a wonderful independent bookstore in Eugene, Oregon. I was there as a featured poet in a reading. Wandering around I found a used volume of Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours by Frederic L. Cheyette. (©2001 Cornell University Press). That was it. I was hooked. After four years of research, which included traveling to the North Pole in Sweden to see the Aurora Borealis in person, a month in Narbonne, France, and 2,000 miles of driving through the Languedoc (thank you Red), I finished it.”