Keeping busy as teacher, author, mom
Elizabeth Mosier published a novella as part of a series promoting adult literacy
By the age of 5, Elizabeth Mosier had decided to become an author.
She would imagine herself sitting in front of a window and creating stories.
"I knew what a metaphor was before I learned it in school," she said.
These days, she's the one doing the teaching - and the writing.
Mosier's novella, The Playgroup, was published last month as part of GemmaMedia's "Open Door" series to promote adult literacy. She wrote about her book party on her blog.
She also is the author of the novel My Life as a Girl (Random House) and numerous short stories and essays that have appeared in magazines such as Seventeen, Cimarron Review, Child, and Poets and Writers.
A graduate of Bryn Mawr College and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College, Mosier has taught fiction and nonfiction writing on a variety of levels and is currently a lecturer at Bryn Mawr.
Mosier was such an avid reader as a youngster in Arizona that she had memories that she thought were her own, but actually happened to characters in books.
"Nothing affects you like the books you read when you are a kid," said Mosier, citing A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, among others.
Real experiences, she said, also are valuable in developing stories.
"My real life is intertwined with my writing life," she said, and that certainly holds true in her latest work.
During one of her pregnancies, Mosier's doctors believed her child had cancer. In The Playgroup, the main character goes through the same trauma.
She said she knew what her character was thinking and what she was going through.
Mosier graduated from Bryn Mawr with a degree in psychology, and earned her MFA after publishing stories in magazines and working as an editor.
"I found out early on that I would make a really lousy psychologist," she said. "I'm really just interested in people."
Mosier, 48, lives in St. Davids with her husband, Chris Mills, and their two daughters, balancing her family, teaching and writing.
"I really love my students and I love teaching," she said. "You feel so productive when you're teaching. You're helping someone else find their voice."