MrsDarwin in a nutshell

This is a short biography I wrote recently (and late at night) for a literary project.

I wasn't born in Texas, and I don't know if I got here as soon as I could, but here I am now. Near Austin, to be precise. Texas is too big to just be "from Texas". I don't call myself Texan, though -- my heart is in Ohio.

I've always been a reader, though I don't know if I can claim to have always been a thinker. During my sophomore year at Orthodox Catholic U, a professor broke up an argument I was having with another Honors student about what we thought each other thought about our current reading selection. "Can either of you back up your position from the text?" he asked. The novel concept of having to confront an author's thought, as opposed to my own washy first impressions of a book, set off electrical connections in my brain that are still sparking today.

Having spent most of my academic career in the theatre, I love the dramatic sweep of fiction: the subtext, the tactics and intentions, the objectives and super-objectives of the characters; the directorial sweep of plot and theme and mood; the interplay of details and universals. And I love "Catholic" fiction, which I feel too tired to define precisely right now. I just know that it doesn't leave me beating the book against my head, whining, "But none of it was true!"

I'm married to the brilliant and perfectly compatible Darwin, and we have four children under 8 (three daughters with vast amounts of energy, and a small boy who is made of cute). We're cradle Catholics trying to raise another generation of "good kids". Having felt we were vastly qualified to parent and homeschool by dint of being oldest siblings and having been homeschooled ourselves, we're only now coming to the realization that just maybe we're in way over our heads, and then some.

And now my brain is shutting down, so I'm gonna leave it at that.