The summer of 1995 my husband dropped me off at camp, leaving me to my own devices far removed from the real world as I knew it. That's how I felt as I waved him goodbye standing in front of the white painted wooden barracks at Fort Worden.

From an article in Poets & Writers I had learned a conference was the place to be for aspiring and seasoned writers alike. I gathered ten pages worth of vignettes and poems that related to my childhood growing up in the Netherlands, and signed up for a fiction workshop with Janice Eidus at The Port Townsend Writers Conference on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington State. Janice presented us with guidelines ...