Peggy Ann Barnett
Filed under: Authors
Peggy Ann Barnett is a photographer, poet, and writer of historical fiction. Inspired by her grandmother's storytelling of Germanic folktales, she has always been deeply connected to the Middle Ages and the lives of its characters. "Children inhabit stories told to them, they are real living worlds. I could see the mountains move, hear animals talk, and be frightened by cruel queens." Using that ability to live in an alternate world, Peggy wrote Bitter Fruit, a novel that envelops the reader in 12th-century France. Research is her passion as she moves the reader through a sensual world that is "as real as walking down a medieval street".
Bitter Fruit took five years of research and writing. She traveled to the North Pole in winter to observe the Northern Lights, to Iceland to understand the Viking mindset, and to the Languedoc in France to find the remaining faint echoes of Ermengarde of Narbonne.
Peggy grew up in 1950's Queens, NY. In the 1960's, with a BFA in photography from The Cooper Union, she married Ron Barnett, who loved art, music, and traveling to medieval castles as much as she did. In 2006, after a fifty-year career as a photographer in her New York studio, she moved to the Pacific Northwest. Her poetry book, On Your Left!, was inspired by a speeding biker nearly hitting her on a hiking trail.
At the age of seventy-seven Peggy has written her first novel: Bitter Fruit. She is proud to represent seniors as vibrant and smart. Peggy loves hiking, her orange cat Bix, cooking for friends, and visiting her daughter Emma in Portland, Oregon.
Website: https://peggyannbarnett.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/peggybarnettwriter
Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/Peggy_Ann_Barnett
Winning Entry: Bitter Fruit
Contest Won: North Street Book Prize 2022, Honorable Mention
