my Works
Newspaper Columns
‘Sex’ and the Pink Ribbon
All right, we admit it. We’re not traditional "Sex and the City" types.
We’re five women from Austin, Tex. (wrong number, right sex, wrong city), who range from our late 40s to early 60s (wrong demographics; too old). Our shoes are conservative and our politics are liberal (wrong, right).
-- The New York Times Week in Review, June 1, 2008
Ulterior Designs
In the fall of 2005, a camera-toting, microphone-wielding crowd of international media descended on the federal courthouse in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They came to cover Kitzmiller v. Dover, the most recent court battle about teaching evolution in America’s public schools. Eleven parents had sued the Dover, Pennsylvania, school board for mandating instruction about intelligent design in the district’s ninth-grade biology classes.
-- The Texas Observer, June 13, 2008
Surviving Alone
By the time you read this, I’ll be 58.
I’m the same age as Red China and millions of other American Baby Boomers. Viewed broadly, my age is no big deal.
More specifically, though, I’m surprised to be 58 and in apparent good health. It’s shocking to me when I find myself looking at a future that may stretch into my sixties, seventies and even eighties.
-- Heal: Living Well After Cancer, Summer 2008
JOURNEYS; 36 Hours | Austin, Tex.
TEXANS, especially sentimental University of Texas alumni, have long agonized over Austin's soul. Does Austin remain easygoing and eccentric in its setting of rugged hills, trees and lakes? Are its politics still liberal and is its music still rowdy? Is it still a refuge for slackers who don't want to grow up and move to Houston or Dallas?
-- The New York Times Op-Ed page, March 28, 2003
We’re Big, We’re Back, We’re Texas
SOMEWHERE, Ann Richards and Molly Ivins — bless their big, demanding hearts and rest their impatient souls — must be sharing non-alcoholic margaritas and crowing with delight. Their beloved Texas Democrats, long rumored to be terminally dysfunctional, bitter and comatose or dead, are staking out the center stage of the 2008 Democratic presidential primaries. On March 4, two days after Texas Independence Day, they will choose between Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton in what turns out to be a pivotal contest.
Well, hot, as we say down here, durn.
-- The New York Times Week in Review, February 24, 2008
Sledding Through a Bush Family Fantasy
Growing up in West Texas marks you forever.
Mountain ranges give me the creeps. Rain was such a stranger that I still can barely manage to open and close an umbrella without a nervous breakdown. Even after all these years, my idea of pure freedom remains driving fast along a flat, straight road, drinking beer and playing country music so loud my eardrums almost burst.
-- The Texas Observer, January 25, 2008
Back in the UAE
We are a strange family when it comes to travel. My husband and I were almost deported from England years ago. We once hired a taxi to get us out of Albania. And we rarely make plans or hotel reservations. We like to think we’re serendipitous.
-- The Texas Observer, November 02, 2007
What We Learned From Each Other
Who knows why you become close friends with another person? Is it chemistry? Are you drawn together by your differences or your commonalities, your strengths or your weaknesses?
You don’t know. What you do know, though, is something about yourself and your own expectations about life. You are the kind of person who has always known life is not fair. Maybe you were born knowing it or you learned it at an early age, but you can never remember not knowing it.
If life were fair, then your close friend would not be
dying at the age of 44.
-- The Dallas Morning News, July 28, 2002
So Did We Win the Feminist Revolution?
I began to hear about the feminist movement thirty-three years ago when I was in college in Lubbock. My friend Sharon, who had up till then seemed pretty normal, had gone to the first meeting of Texas Tech feminists. She told me that women were oppressed by rigid sex roles, meager expectations about careers and crushingly unrealistic expectations about good looks.
I was nineteen, wore mini-skirts, slept in brush rollers,
and applied makeup with a shovel. Now that Sharon mentioned
it, I felt oppressed.
-- The Dallas Morning News, Viewpoints page, May 5, 2002
Sitting in Judgment
Dear John S.: My name probably is not familiar to you,
but my face may be. I was one of the 12 members of
the jury that decided your criminal case almost two
weeks ago.
-- The Dallas Morning News, Viewpoints, October 7, 2001
Hotter than a Crawford Ranch
When a Texan -- even a president -- tells the news media
that all good Texans stay in-state and sweat and avoid
rattlesnakes, the media should be suspicious. Very
suspicious.
-- The New York Times Op-Ed page, August 28, 2001
Young Adult Novels
Both Sides Now (2000)
A loving family struggles to re-create itself so it can survive in "this subtle, absorbing examination of a girl's difficult passage into maturity through the voice of one of the truest narrators in the genre" (Kirkus, pointer review). Mostly told in the voice of 15-year-old Liza, this novel also includes passages written by the mother, which The Horn Book Magazine, in a starred review, called "a remarkable portrait of a woman who, exhausted by the effort of maintaining her cheery facade, can no longer be who her family expects her to be."
Conditions of Love (1999)
Sarah Morgan, 14, wrestles with the mysteries of sex, friendship, and her growing -- and disturbing -- knowledge of a beloved father, who died recently. "Characterization is effortless and effective, funny and perceptive, setting Sarah's milieu in a Texan patchwork of big-haired ex-cheerleaders, sex-affirmative Christian psychiatrists, and youthful casualties of bitter divorce," said The Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, which honored this book as a Blue Ribbon title.
Don't Think Twice (1996)
Smart-talking, funny and brokenhearted Anne Harper, age 17, grows up and grows wiser as she brings her baby to term in an unwed mothers' home in Texas in 1967. This "masterful first novel" (Kirkus), which the Voice of Youth Advocates called "an absolute winner," was an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a BookSense 76 choice, and a finalist in the Texas Institute of Letters' Young Adult category.
Essays, humor
A Texas Family Time Capsule (2002)
Ruth Pennebaker’s most recent book, a collection of her best newspaper columns, is what most mental-health experts would call a cry for help from a woman who finds herself trapped in a world teeming with Martha Stewart and Monica Lewinsky, middle-aged centerfolds in Playboy and remote-control fireplaces, holiday newsletters that induce nationwide nausea, abuse of apostrophes, and time-management tips for toddlers. One of the essays from this book, on his and hers versions of pregnancy, was produced by the Dallas Museum of Art’s Arts & Letters Live series in February 2003.
Parents: A Toddler's Guide
(Clarkson-Potter, 1986)
Parents is a view of the world of grown-ups, as narrated by
a wiseacre two-year-old who goes eyeball-to-kneecap with the
well-meaning giants in the house. A humorous classic that is
also, tragically, out of print.
Stork Realities: What No One Ever Tells You About Pregnancy (Libby Wilson, co-author)
(Harper & Row, 1985)
Stork Realities is a pregnancy book with attitude, humor and
oddball facts about the gestation period of the human female.
Tragically, it is out of print.
PERFORMANCES OF WORK
"His and Hers," a selection from A Texas Family Time Capsule, was performed at Arts & Letters Live's Texas Bound Series in Dallas in 2003
"Mediation," a short story from a novel in progress, was performed at Arts & Letters Live’s Texas Bound Series in Dallas in 2005
AWARDS
Don't Think Twice:
* BookSense 76 choice
* American Library Association's Best Books for Young Adults
* Finalist, Texas Institute of Letters, Young Adult Category
Conditions of Love
* Blue Ribbon title for the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books
* Teen Book of the Month Club
* Finalist for the Book Publishers of Texas Award for the Best Book for Children and Young People,Texas Institute of Letters
Both Sides Now
* Recommended by Hurricane Voices, website for families dealing with cancer
* Random House Readers Circle selection
A Texas Family Time Capsule
* Finalist, John Bloom Humor Award, Texas Institute of Letters