My grandfather had a monkey he called Parpeetus. The monkey, and his owner, died before I was born, and yet their combined stories have remained with me.

Parpeetus wore a black velvet suit, I was told, with a hole cut out for his tail. He sat at the dinner table with the human beings, in a child's highchair, and he got up to all sorts of mischief: playing with the visiting ladies' make-up, hurling eggs, even managing to start a car.

Sometimes I think Parpeetus has influenced my writing more than all the rewards and publications I have been fortunate enough to acquire.

Parpeetus was the soul of mischief, yet he was tolerated in the midst of a conventional society. He is the Devil in a velvet suit, the prankster in Shakespeare's plays, the clowns in the Southwestern Pueblo dances. He would tell the truth, if he could speak. Since he has no words, his antics imitate those of his masters, which often go unpunished. He knows no morality, no code, and yet he thrives on the patronage of people who consider themselves above reproach.

My first novel, "After Such Knowledge" (a title only feasible for a twenty-two year old writer, the age I was when I wrote it) was about a Parpeetus-like breakout. A conventional woman, who has married because she was pregnant, decides after much soul-searching to advise her daughter to have an abortion to avoid her own mistake. Published by Hough-ton Mifflin in 1961, the novel found its readers in a period before Roe V. Wade when abortion was illegal and sometimes fatal. Reviewed admiringly, its message was usually ignored.

The novel seemed to me to have missed its mark, and I decided to satisfy the remainder of my three-book contract with Houghton-Mifflin with collections of short stories. I was also bearing and raising my first son, and that made sustained work difficult, but not impossible. My writing routine was established in childhood and I was able to hang on to it even in the midst of motherhood.

My next two collections of short stories, "The Touching Hand" and "The Way it is Now", drew on my memories of the border south in the days before the Civil Rights movement. Several of the stories were honored by inclusion in the "Best American Short Stories" (1959) and two O'Henry Collections (1964 and 1966.)

My most read story, however, remains one I published in the Harvard Advocate while an undergraduate: "Winter Term" (later published in Mademoiselle and widely anthologized). The college love affair it describes, while innocuous enough by present day standards, aroused the ire of the powers that be in Cambridge, and I was persuaded to change the mention of place names so that the story is no longer associated with my once-Alma Mater. So it goes. I learned a valuable lesson in what to expect from readers when Harvard boys used the story as an excuse to ask me out on dates.

Bearing and raising three sons slowed my career and gave me a strong dose of the problems that face women who try to do everything. I continued to write and publish short stories but it was nearly twenty years before my next book saw the light of day. "Passion and Prejudice: a Family Memoir" (Alfred A. Knopf) aroused a storm of protest and sold a lot of copies. You will find more about that book, and the controversy, in that section of this website.

My next four novels were published by small presses; their births coincided with the change in the publishing industry that has made "mid-list" writers like me (those who sell around ten thousand copies of each book) scrambling for access to their readers. "Small Victories", "Matron of Honor" and "Straight Man" were published by a fine small press, since defunct, Zoland Books. Permanent Press brought out "Upstate", one of my most controversial novels. My most recent collection of short stories, "Transgressions", was published by Sarabande Books. I owe my survival as a writer to these splendid publishers and to the literary quarterlies that continue to publish my short stories and poems (New Letters, the Conneticut Review, Southwest Review, Glimmer Train).

I have won my share of awards, including prizes for short-short stories (two, from Glimmer Train) and for plays (Mill Mountain Theatre and Goucher College.) I have also won fellowships to those blessed retreats for writers, The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Blue Mountain and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. Weeks of solitude under those roofs allowed me the sustained hours for writing that were not available when I was raising three sons.

Book reviewing has been important to my career; sensitive and understanding reviews in many newspapers have helped me to keep going (although I have had my share of blasts!) I learned a great deal about how the publishing industry works when I edited the book review page at the Louisville Courier-Journal in the early 1980's.

A word of hope for writers and readers who know that the number of people who care about books in t his country is in steep decline: local reading groups, often open to work by women and by lesser-known writers, are springing up all over the country. They will help us all flourish. Writers will find their readers, and readers will find the writers, often screened out by commercial publishers, who will nourish their souls.

I have also had the honor of founding several organizations devoted to the work of women artists: the Kentucky Foundation for Women, now fifteen years old, supports the work of Kentucky women artists who are involved in social change; The Women's Project and Productions in New York City supports the work of women playwrights and directors, and the Sallie Bingham Archives for Women's Papers at Duke University saves what might otherwise be lost to history.

I lead, and have led, a fortunate life, in all ways, and for its blessings I am always grateful.

And through it all, Parpeetus has kept me company, as I hope he will to the end.