People need stories...we use stories to teach, to learn, to make sense of the world around us. As long as we need stories, we will need books.

Over the years, I've traveled to many places for inspiration and research, including Pennsylvania, Ohio, South Carolina, California, and Hawaii.

Ignorant people, whispering cruel rumors, her mother whispered. Pay them no mind.

Sometimes the most ordinary things are the ones we learn to miss the most.

When I was working on my first novel, 'The Quilter's Apprentice,' I knew I wanted to write about friendship, especially women's friendship and how women use friendship to sustain themselves and nurture each other.

People who assume my books are only about quilts obviously haven't read them! I've always known that my books are about quilters - in other words, people - rather than quilts or quilting.

For as long as I can remember, I've always been interested in issues of social justice, political freedom, and civil rights.