Jeannie Burt

Were one to award Jeannie Burt an advanced degree, it might be a Doctorate in Singularity. Born of ranch life in rural Oregon, aloneness, independence, and individualism were intimate companions. Burt never fit into the the tiny community she grew up in: a spread-out scattering of ranches set among the dry, baked-biscuit hills of wheat country. Being accepted there meant behaving in the narrow lines that demarked how one dressed, believed, and behaved. Just out of middle school she read "Brave...See more

Were one to award Jeannie Burt an advanced degree, it might be a Doctorate in Singularity. Born of ranch life in rural Oregon, aloneness, independence, and individualism were intimate companions. Burt never fit into the the tiny community she grew up in: a spread-out scattering of ranches set among the dry, baked-biscuit hills of wheat country. Being accepted there meant behaving in the narrow lines that demarked how one dressed, believed, and behaved. Just out of middle school she read "Brave New World," a book that influenced her beyond measure and labeled her a sinner. She couldn't see the sense of confining life to that narrow definition, and craved to live somewhere else, in a real city, another country, anywhere it wasn't like this. So she set out from farming country for a university that was one hundred and sixty times the size of her town. She knew no one there. She loved it. She met students whose mouths formed a music of accents and ideas unlike any she'd ever heard. She became active in student government. She studied for a year in Europe where she encountered ire toward America and Americans, and loved informal debates stirred up by that anger. Europe exposed her to its rich culture. To this day, she loves Europe's art, most of which would never have found acceptance in the tight and tiny community where she grew up. After graduation from university, she spent time in New York, then moved to San Francisco where she met her husband. They moved back to metropolitan Oregon where she spent a career in business and corporate Human Resources. She has been active in politics and civics having served on the Research Board of the City Club of Portland, and having led a PAC concerned with term limits. She founded MED&CA, a Middle East cultural association, and has served on the board of directors of Green Village Schools, Afghanistan, which aggressively promotes women's education. She soon will be working with Call to Safety, a women's crisis line. The culmination of her experience and philosophy eventually carved her writing. Though she began by publishing non-fiction works, it was always literary fiction that truly moved her; she longed to write the sorts of stories and characters she loved to read. Her first novel, "When Patty Went Away" is the tale of what happens to a small community when a rebellious teen-age girl disappears and no one but a quiet farmer does anything about it. The novel is set in a fictional version of the farm country where Jeannie was raised. A section of the novel was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in fiction. Her second novel, "The Seasons of Doubt," is set in sweeping and remote Nebraska of the late 1880s. Mary Harrington is an abandoned mother living at a time that was unkind for women. Mary's story reflects a feisty mother's decision to face death, or to manage to find a way to raise her child alone. Find out more from Jeannie at www.jeannieburt.com. See less