Lauren
Small

As a writer, I am drawn to place, to the richness of what lies on the surface of a landscape and to the mystery of what lingers deep below.

In my imagination, stories arise in specific settings: a rural cabin on a mountain lake, a horse barn on the arid plains, a stone house built like a fortress on a tree-lined street.  The people who inhabit these places are rooted in them, tied by threads of memory and desire, entangled in the present and the past. 

In Choke Creek a girl must decide if she will become the fifth generation to run her family's newspaper.  The boy she loves goes off to Vietnam, thinking he is fighting a new war, only to discover it is the same war his great-grandfather fought against the Indians over a century before.

In Blue Pine an archaeologist busies himself in a search for long-lost artifacts from paleo-Indian times—while woefully ignoring the hidden secrets of his own past. 

Who am I? the people in my stories ask.  Where do I come from?  The answers, they learn, lie deep in the past.  Only the past is never exactly what it seems, and in the end they must undertake journeys to confront it, seeking out the truth no matter what the costs, if only to rid themselves of the demons that still haunt them.  Along the way they learn virtues that strike me as admirable and enduring, qualities like courage, perseverance, and personal integrity.

 Life, we have learned to our sorrow, is riddled by tragedy.  Love—despite what you hear—won't always save you, and outcomes are rarely perfect.

But my stories suggest it is well worth thinking about the place you came from.  Seek it out.  Ask questions—hard questions—and don't be afraid to look for the answers.  You might find yourself surprised by what you discover and by the way it transforms your life.

Contact Info:

lcsmall@comcast.net

Lauren Small
8419 Stevenson Road
Baltimore, MD 21208
410-608-5841

lauren@laurensmall.com