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Carol Ann Wilson

Author of BECAUSE WE WANTED TO! • ABOUT EARLINE • STILL POINT OF THE TURNING WORLD

Carol Ann Wilson

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“House of Mirrors”

Published in The Awakenings Review, Spring 2024

Nominated for The Pushcart Prize

It was mid-October 2008 and our last evening in Italy after spending several weeks in the Chianti countryside. With an overnight stay in the fishing village of Fiumicino near the Rome airport, we slept unaware of what was happening at home in Colorado.

Back in Boulder, through the fog of jet lag, I checked my email messages, something I hadn’t been able to do consistently in Italy. And there on my screen was a message from Vandy, a friend who had been restoring a small building at Stillpoint, our beloved property in the mountains. She had written it October 6, more than a week earlier.

Hi Carol,
I want you to know that we did not end up camping at Stillpoint last weekend. We arrived at the property and encountered a man who said he was the owner. He was not familiar with your name. After a short conversation with him we left. I felt as though the person we met did not belong there and thought you should know. He said that he planned to stay until November or so.

Read more…


“Trust”

Published in HerStry, April 24, 2024

When I was eight years old, many decades ago now, I learned there were different kinds of dirty. We were new to the mountains, my family and I, renting a cabin at a small, rustic resort where the ghost town of Bakerville usedto be, near Loveland Pass. Down the creek a ways, lived an old man we called Pops. At least we thought of him as old, with his pudgy frame, poorly shaved face, saggy skin, and well-worn clothes. Pops would come around to the picnic area and play his harmonica for my brother, sister, and me. He would also perform magic tricks and give us silly names. Stump-a-Doodle-and-Bunch was one. He made us laugh as he entertained and teased us. We liked and trusted him because he seemed to care about us.

Read more…


“Just Like Your Father” – 2nd Place, Unlimited Literature Flash Nonfiction Contest

“How’s Little Bob today?” the principal asked as he swung tiny five-year-old me up in the air, bringing us face-to-face. I liked that he called me Little Bob because it connected me to my dad, whom I adored. It meant that I was part of him, that I was like him.

Years later this connection to my dad acquired a different hue. On the cusp of my teens, I began questioning and trying to understand my world, my mother in particular.
“Don’t argue with me. Your father is always arguing with me. And you’re just like him!”
I was trying to explain something I did, something my mother didn’t like, something I don’t even remember. What I do remember is standing by a spigot in our back yard, washing out a galvanized steel pail. I remember the warm day, the earlier breeze on recess, drops of sweat trickling down my back. I remember her fury, the churning in my stomach, anger and dismay at feeling unjustly accused. And I remember vowing never to bring a child into this world to suffer its cruelty and injustice, a vow I was to keep.
Read more…

Interview by Sandra Squire Fluck

Published in bookscover2cover

Carol Ann WilsonFor over forty years, you have been a teacher, high school principal, assistant principal, university instructor/visiting professor, and a consultant. What have you learned about the public school system in the U.S.?

Our system of compulsory schooling grew from the recognition that a healthy democracy depends on an educated public. An educated public is laudable and essential, and we still have work to do toward that end. What has struck me over the years is the unevenness of quality in schools across the country and, not uncommonly, within some school districts.

Read more…


Parts of Me: Reflections on Reviewing The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Follow up to the book review published in bookscover2cover
Recently, listening to a talk by poet David Whyte, I heard him speak of “the parts of ourselves we have yet to meet.” I thought of those mystery rooms, and something clicked, finally. The rooms are parts of myself I have yet to meet, to know, parts of a bigger me to be discovered and explored.

Read more…

Please check out bookscover2cover for reviews, essays, interviews, and reading lists: https://bookscover2cover.com


Live Oaks

Nonfiction essay published in The Wrath-Bearing Tree
June 1991. I’m half-way up a seventy-foot rock facing at Camp Hale, Colorado, my body pressed against the hard, cool granite. My fingers search for purchase on what feels like a polished surface. I’m ascending one of the rock towers the Tenth Mountain Division, a unit of 15,000 men, scaled when preparing for mountain and winter warfare during World War II. CIA secret operatives trained here, too, including Tibetan freedom fighters in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Inside me, my own war rages. I took the lead instructor, David’s, suggestion that I climb blindfolded, because I trust him. But under normal circumstances, even trusting an experienced instructor, I wouldn’t climb this giant slab for love or money.

Read more…

Please check out The Wrath-Bearing Tree for essays, reviews, fiction, and poetry on military, economic, and social violence: https://www.wrath-bearingtree.com


Review: The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Invited review published in bookscover2cover
“Even dawn begins before its beginning . . .” writes poet Claudia Rankine in “The White Lion.” It is a fitting early line in The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story, a book comprising poetry, essays, fiction, photography, and a timeline that leads the reader through four hundred years of history, much of it rarely, if ever, told and through voices that seldom pierce the citadel of popular historical certainty.

This dawn features a ship, the White Lion, arriving at Point Comfort in the colony of Virginia in 1619, a year before the customary chronicling of the 1620 pilgrims’ landing at Jamestown. The timeline entry preceding the poem tells of the ship’s chained cargo of twenty to thirty captive Africans, who are traded to the colonists for supplies, “making them the first enslaved Africans in the English colonies that will become the United States.”

Read more…

Please check out bookscover2cover for reviews, essays, interviews, and reading lists: https://bookscover2cover.com


Why I Write

Unpublished essay

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWD1VvCJS_0

Carol reading


Antidote to Truth

Creative nonfiction published in The Write Launch

Standing in Tiananmen Square that autumn day in 1998, I marveled at its vastness. The few people populating its more than fifty-three acres seemed like ants on an enormous sidewalk. The square could hold many, many more. Multitudes. I closed my eyes and tried to imagine multitudes there, specifically the million protesters packed into those 4,736,121 square feet at the height of the 1989 pro-democracy movement.

Conjuring the protests, images of the movement’s final hours flooded my mind— tanks, heavily armed soldiers, protestors desperate and defiant, their fervor steadfast despite the overwhelming threat of being shot or crushed, their inevitable fear. Read more…

Please check out the whole issue for compelling short stories, long short stories, poetry, novel excerpts, and other creative nonfiction: https://thewritelaunch.com


Glass Houses

Creative nonfiction published in The Write Launch

Many glass houses

I first saw Hong Kong from the air, late into the night. It was February 6, 1997. As our plane descended into the vast constellation of varicolored lights, it seemed as if we were landing in a box of sparkling jewels, layers and layers of them. The contrast of dark night and myriad lights further heightened my sense of adventure, adding to the city’s already bold allure. Read more…

Please check out the whole issue for compelling short stories, long short stories, poetry, novel excerpts, and other creative nonfiction: https://thewritelaunch.com


Fireworks in Hong Kong

Creative nonfiction published in The Write Launch

https://youtu.be/rjFBALC7XM4

Carol reading an excerpt

Demonstrators in Hong Kong

sticker for Colorado Authors League Award WinnerHow can I forget the press of the crowd, the feeling of being swept up in history that lunar New Year in Hong Kong? Throngs packed the walkway by the city’s harbor, and we were snugly pressed in the midst of them. We had stopped in Hong Kong for a few days on our way to Shanghai for research on a book I was writing. And those few days coincided not only with the Chinese New Year, but also Hong Kong’s last New Year celebration under British rule. Read more…

Please check out the whole issue for compelling short stories, long short stories, poetry, novel excerpts, and other creative nonfiction: https://thewritelaunch.com


The Girl from Coke

Essay published in Under the Gum Tree

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-k6p92nIB00

Carol reading an excerpt

Carol as the Girl from Coke in 1967A faded color photograph is my sole relic from the days I spent in Meridian, Mississippi. Creases span the worn surface, and smudges stain the yellowing border, hinting at its age. The date printed on the top border, May ’67, confirms it.

In the photo, my twenty-two year-old self leans against a red Camaro, smiling. I’m wearing an outfit I made on my Singer sewing machine: a short-sleeved, white blouse and a straight red skirt that hits just above the knee. A red ribbon ties my then-dark hair up and back, and white three-inch heels encase my feet, one foot slightly ahead of the other in a kind of fashion-model pose.

sticker for Colorado Authors League Award WinnerThe cherry red of the Camaro almost matches that of my skirt. A sign atop the car shouts, “The Girl from Coca-Cola is Here! Hundreds of chances to win $10-$35!” Looking at the old photo of myself, I see a version of me, a version that can’t know all that experience has taught me these many years since. The 1960s in the Deep South held almost unimaginable turmoil—hate, fear, violence. Yet possibility somehow lay in the mix. The possibility that our country really could do better in fulfilling its founding promise of equal opportunity for all its citizens. But who was I then? And how did that person find her way to being the current me?

Read more…


Because We Wanted To!

Finalist: Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award (Women’s Studies)
and
Finalist: Colorado Authors’ League Award (Creative Nonfiction)

Get a glimpse of the unconventional lives of Clara Reida and Margaret Locarnini, and the rich stew of adventure, courage, and friendship that surrounds them. Writer Carolyn Servid says, “One cannot help but feel the vibrant resonance that emanates from these two visionaries and the singular place called Singing Acres Ranch.”

Now available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle versions.


Cookin’ Wild – Margaret’s Way

Cover of Cookin' Wild

Cookin’ Wild takes you on an enjoyable tour of the late Margaret Locarnini’s kitchen at Singing Acres Ranch, high in the Colorado Rockies. And it does more than that. You’ll not only be engaged in her recipes and perspectives on preparing wild game, you’ll also find yourself happily getting to know the feisty, creative personality of Margaret herself. Reading her book about cooking is much like sitting down for a visit over a steaming cup of coffee with the author. A woman of many talents, Margaret hunted, built, taught, painted, created, and more. Producing interesting, delicious meals was one of her favorite things to do. Many people attest to Margaret’s culinary skills, and ranch partner Clara Reida is one. Clara says, “My weight is a testimony to Margaret’s good cooking.”

Now available at Amazon in paperback and Kindle versions.


Still Point of the Turning World: The Life of Gia-fu Feng

Still Point book cover

Foreword Reviews’ INDIEFAB Book of the Year Award in Biography (2010)
and
Finalist: Indie 2010 New Generation Award
and
Finalist: Colorado Authors’ League Top Hand Award

Teacher, translator and Tai Ji master, Gia Fu-Feng is remembered for his colorful life in which he learned and taught alongside some of the twentieth century’s greatest writers and thinkers, including Jack Kerouac and Alan Watts. Through his life and work, he sought to bring the ancient wisdom of the Tao into the modern world. His translation of the Tao Te Ching has sold over 1,250,000 copes and is widely considered to be one of the most readable and influential translations of our time. Carol Ann Wilson, sister to Gia-fu’s heir, used Gia-fu’s biographical notes and numerous outside sources to write the extraordinary story of a rogue Taoist sage.


About Earline

The Florida panhandle, the rural South. 1942. On a day that seemed like any other, a nineteen-year-old girl goes for an ordinary walk only to find herself on an extraordinary hitchhiking trek across the country—a trek that creates a geographic and emotional blueprint for her life.

Book cover of About Earline

After almost forty years as an educator—teacher, high school principal, assistant superintendent, university instructor/visiting professor, school-university partnership director, and consultant—Carol Ann Wilson has turned her attention to writing. Her favored genre is creative nonfiction.

Books

Cookin’ Wild – Margaret’s Way

Because We Wanted To!

Still Point of the Turning World

About Earline

Essays

“Trust”

Antidote to Truth

Fireworks in Hong Kong

Glass Houses

House of Mirrors

Just Like Your Father

Live Oaks

Parts of Me: Reflections on Reviewing The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

The Girl from Coke

Other

Interview by Sandra Squire Fluck

Review: The 1619 Project: A New Origin Story

Videos

Fireworks in Hong Kong

The Girl from Coke

Why I Write

Blog Archive

A Three-Ringed Singing Acres

Behind the Photograph

Book Launch & Tea Ceremony

Friendship

How to Carry Chickens

In Her Own Words

Multiple Facets

Of Friends & Mischief

Of Mountains & Beans

On Patience & Sushi

Reciprocity

Remembering Snowbird: May 10, 1992 – May 18, 2016

Roll, Roll, Roll that Cigarette

Satsuma Mischief

Sweet Harmony

To Celebrate~

Trade Show Tricks

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