Gigi Thibodeau

I am a writer, a poet, a photographer, and a magpie collector of images, thoughts, and vintage treasures. I also specialize in helping new poets and writers learn their craft. I live on the coast of Maine with my husband, British literature scholar Todd Avery, and our two cats, Scout and Dill.  

My Background:

I earned a BA in Literature from the University of Southern Maine and an MFA in Creative Writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.  I taught university writing and literature classes for nine years, and left recently to pursue several writing projects.  My poems have been published in a wide variety of journals over the past two decades, including Mid-American Review, River Styx, Birmingham Poetry Review, Louisiana Literature, Permafrost, Going Down Swinging, and Soundings East, to name a few.  

I've received several grants and awards for my writing and community work.  Most recently, I won the Judith Seigel Pearson Essay Award from Wayne State University for a piece I wrote on the Polish Gypsy poet Papusza, and I was an Editor's Choice for the James Wright Award from Mid-American Review.   

My chapbook, Learning to Tell Time, won the Midnight Sun Award and was published by the University of Alaska Fairbanks in 2009.  In 2007 I co-edited Where the Road Begins, an anthology published with a grant from the NEA, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jack Kerouac's On the Road.  

I have an article on a previously unpublished version of Little Red Riding Hood forthcoming in 2011 in Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy-Tale Studies.  The best part about this article is that it is co-authored with my husband.

I was the 2009 Jack Kerouac Writer-in-Residence at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, and I am a poetry editor at Newport Review, an online literary journal.

The first article I wrote here at HubPages, Five Tips for Curing the Winter Blues, won a HubNuggets Award.  Thanks to everyone who voted for it!

My Passions:

When I'm not writing or teaching writing, I can often be found taking photographs, cooking, bird watching,  obsessing over flowers, or pawing through shoeboxes of old photographs at a flea market.  

Links:

You can find much more of my writing and photography at my blog, The Magpie's Fancy, and at my Flickr Page.  You also can find my writing tips and exercises--and much, much more-- at my new blog, The Magpie's Pen.

My favorite quote: 

"Risk!  Risk anything!  Care no more for the opinions of others, for those voices.  Do the hardest thing on earth for you.  Act for yourself.  Face the truth."

 ~Katherine Mansfield

Please note: All the photographs on my hubs are my own, unless otherwise specified. They are all under copyright and may not be used without my express written consent.  Thank you!