Author Archives: readersquest

About readersquest

I'm a retired naval officer and writer. I live with my husband, two sons, and several family pets in a house in the woods.

Between Us “Girls”: The US Naval Institute’s 2016 Naval History “Athena Conference”

Posted on September 12, 2016

I’m going to call out an admiral and a general in this post, with all due respect and only the kindest of intent. But first, I’d like to start with a story that I’ve told elsewhere. As a lieutenant on … Continue reading →

Posted in History, In the News | 6 Comments

The Water Is Off in the Fountain. Don’t Let the Lights Go Out, Too.

Posted on June 24, 2016

Friends who are veterans (and family members): I had an email yesterday from the Women’s Memorial Foundation, which is in immediate and serious danger of closing. The Foundation has been forced to cut staff, and when I visited the Memorial … Continue reading →

Posted in Stories, writing life | Tagged | Leave a comment

Writing Life: Down the Rabbit Hole (Again)

Posted on April 17, 2016

I’ve been struggling for a couple of weeks to write the introductory section of Chapter Four of the book Tracy Crow and I  are working on. I have pages of research notes and only 1,500 words or so to write. … Continue reading →

Posted in Writing Life | 2 Comments

The Matriarch of Contemporary Women Veterans’ Literature

Posted on January 27, 2016

Since Cara Hoffman wrote her op-ed “The Things She Carried” for the New York Times in 2014, critics have either pointed out the “absence” of women veterans’ narratives in the canon of war literature, or wondered what female authors today’s women … Continue reading →

Posted in History, Literary Criticism, Nonfiction | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Writing Life: Year in Review

Posted on December 29, 2015

I’m not usually inclined to write a “year in review,” even in my journal, but I ended up with so many projects about women veterans and writing that a recap seems to be in order – especially since I got … Continue reading →

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Writing Life: Stitch-and-Bitch

Posted on November 19, 2015

Was recently reading over some of the emails home that served as my journal of our three-year tour in Moscow. My late mother-in-law, God bless her, had the foresight to print out the ones she found interesting and collect them … Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction, Writing Life | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Writing Life – Call for Submissions, Upcoming Deadline

Posted on October 20, 2015

The response to our call for submissions to the Veterans Writing Project’s literary journal O-Dark-Thirty for a special themed issue, writing by women veterans, has been gratifying. We’ve received four or five times the usual number of submissions for a quarterly issue, and … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Nonfiction, Poetry, Writing Life | Leave a comment

War, Leadership, and Love: The Contemporary Romance Novels of Army Officer Jessica Scott

Posted on September 4, 2015

Summer of 1976. I’m eleven years old, and I’ve just finished sixth grade. I’ve read everything that the librarian in charge of the little one-room public library in a small town in West Virginia thinks is suitable for a good … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, Literary Criticism | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

Writing Life: I Want to Smack Sam Sacks

Posted on August 26, 2015

This post is mostly not about the writing of women veterans; please forgive the digression. In 2005, a couple of weeks into my first semester of the Writing Program at the Johns Hopkins University, my mother-in-law asked to read some of my … Continue reading →

Posted in Fiction, In the News, Literary Criticism, Writing Life | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Writing Life – July 4, 1994 (aboard HMS Sheffield)

Posted on July 4, 2015

After spending time reading some entertaining, amusing, and moving diaries of American servicewomen, I thought I’d go back and re-read my own diary from my deployment to the Barents Sea on HMS Sheffield in 1994. The Sheffield deployment was special. Only one American intelligence … Continue reading →

Posted in Nonfiction, Writing Life | 4 Comments