Barbara Samuel O'Neal is the author of more than thirty award-winning novels, including THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS and

The Secret of Everything
The Secret of Everything

A native of Colorado, Barbara loves teaching, travel, reading, writing, yoga, walking, food, cooking, photography and...okay, reality television.

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Radio essay online

I taped another radio essay last week.  It went live this morning and you can hear it here:

http://krccnews.org/rccnews/citizen-report-joan-i/2009/06/11/6111

no matter what, you have to keep smiling

Saw these in a vintage shop on West Colorado Avenue last Saturday. Something about the colors, the ragged edge of that door, the cheery trio of smiles, the suitcase….captured me. I’m still thinking about this.

Thus goes the writer brain. I have no idea why the girls are so VERY pleased with this, but they are [...]

Did Joan wash her hands at the same sink?

Joan Didion, the celebrated writer, went to Columbia Elementary School for awhile. The old building, made of red sandstone (as well as I can recollect), not the modern version that occupies the lot these days. I have been drunkenly reading her work, admiring the western cleanness, the spare and unsentimental way she captures the world, [...]

News and reminders

The Lost Recipe for Happiness has gone back to print for a third time.  Hooray!

If you are in Pueblo, please come celebrate a launch party with me on Saturday, January 10, 2-4 pm at Barnes and Noble.  (That’s this Saturday in case your brain is as foggy as mine after the holidays!)  

If you’re in Colorado [...]

Of taproots and home towns

Yesterday, weary of the restlessness that has followed me around for two days, I gave up the pretense of getting some pages one and drove to the downtown library. They had a particular book I wanted, but the destination was less the point than the escape. [...]

Local pleasures

Yesterday, CR and I went to the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo to see the new Rocky Mountain Wild exhibit. This is a zoo worth visiting, truly–not large, but built along the mountain overlooking Colorado Springs, and the exhibits are more and more animal friendly.   We were anxious to see the baby tiger that was partly nutured [...]

Walking meditation

Santa Fe Tail in Colorado Springs. Cell phone photo.

I finally got out for a long training walk yesterday. 12 (or so) miles on the Santa Fe Trail, which runs in a ribbon between the railroad tracks and a fast-running creek. Ravens and blue jays were having skirmishes over best nesting locations. [...]