Betsy Hanson is a Seattle-based author who recently published her first novel, Always Gardenia, which has been featured on Nancy Pearl’s “Book Lust” webcast. The novel tells the story of Gardenia Pitkin who is adjusting to life as a fifty-six year-old widow. She’s lonely and struggling financially, but she counts her blessings: her friends and family, and a new job as an administrative assistant in the English department of the University of the Northwest in Seattle. With a wry comedic sensibility and a respect for the role of trivialities in human life, Always Gardenia combines laugh-out-loud moments with wise reflections on friendships, families, and loss, as well as the complex relationship between mothers and their grown sons. Hanson will be reading from her novel Always Gardenia at the Lopez Library on Friday, September 20th at 6:30pm.
Hanson is an author and is co-translator and editor of This Kind of Woman (Stanford University Press), the first English translation of fiction by twentieth-century Japanese women writers. She wrote book reviews for The New York Times Book Review for ten years and has created a dozen short plays. Awards include a writer’s grant from The Elizabeth George Foundation, grants from the Seattle Arts Commission, and third prize for a young readers’ novel in a contest sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association.