Beverly Knettell, a storyteller with a passion for the classics, can vividly remember her father’s exhaustive book collection. She was twelve when she first discovered the woodcut engravings of the ferocious dogs with their gnarling teeth in Wuthering Heights that caused her to quickly shut the book and the young women walking in formation on the cover of Jane Eyre, that eerily foreshadowed the red-hooded images of The Handmaid’s Tale. Recalling her first introduction to Shakespeare in her early teens, she was mesmerized by the pageantry, the language, and the plots twists—which are now woven into her narratives.

 

Living in Newburyport, Massachusetts, when she’s not writing, reading or gardening, she enjoys weekend visits from her three grandchildren who have wall-papered her kitchen with their artwork while littering her floors with their Legos and magic markers. But don’t tell anyone about her secret admiration for Miss Piggy and how her indomitable spirit is at the heart of all her endeavors.