I've worn a tool belt and swung a hammer for a living. My years as a carpenter--yes, a woman carpenter--introduced me to many great storytellers and many stories, too. You might think that writing and construction don't have much in common, but they really do. Writing is a lot like the day-to-day labor that goes into remodeling a kitchen or adding a second story to house. Writing has a "craft" component that takes years to acquire. Writing takes daily effort, but one day, you'll be able to drive around a city and point to the projects you completed and feel proud of a job well done. One of my biggest thrills as a writer came the day an assistant editor contacted me to tell me that Folio, a literary magazine published by American University, was going to publish my short story, "Lyam's Gift." I asked her why they had chosen it, and she said, "Because it made my editor smile. Every time she talks about that story, a smile comes on her face."

A former carpenter and mother of five, Marylee MacDonald began writing when her last child left for college. Her fiction has won the Jeanne Leiby Chapbook Award, the Barry Hannah Prize, the Ron Rash Award, the Matt Clark Prize, and the ALR Fiction Award. Her novel, Montpelier Tomorrow (All Things That Matter Press, 2014), was a Finalist in the IPPY Awards, the Eric Hoffer Awards, the Bellwether Prize, and the Faulkner-Wisdom Prize. She is widely published in literary magazines such as American Literary Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Folio, Blue Moon Literary & Art Review, Broad River Review, Chattahoochee Review, Folio, Four Quarters, New Delta Review, North Atlantic Review, Raven Chronicles, Reunion: The Dallas Review, River Oak Review, Ruminate, StoryQuarterly, Superstition Review, The Briar Cliff Review, and Yalobusha Review. She is the recipient of an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship for Fiction and residencies at Hawthornden Castle, the Vermont Studio Center, and Footsteps for Creativity. She has been a Writing Fellow at the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing at Arizona State University, and she currently leads a writing workshop in Tempe, AZ.