My family tree is a southwestern pinyon growing in the high desert of Colorado and New Mexico. The wizened evergreen smells good and the old branches burn well. The nuts, produced in abundance, are delicious.
My mother, Nancy Wood, authored 28 books of poetry, nonfiction, fiction, and children’s books, published mostly by Doubleday and Candlewick Press. Three of her poems appear in the Unitarian Universalist hymnal. Her camera and ethnologist’s notebooks focused on Taos Pueblo and rural New Mexico and Colorado. University of New Mexico’s Center for Southwest Research houses her photographic and literary archives.
My father, Myron Wood, was a freelance black-and-white photographer, shooting 125,000 negatives from the late 1940s through the 1980s mainly of Colorado, but also New Mexico, New York City, and Texas. Myron and Nancy produced several books together before they divorced when I was three. Daddy’s photographic archive is at the Pike’s Peak Library.
My eldest sister, Margaret Wood, has written two books about her years as one of Georgia O’Keeffe’s caregivers: A Painter’s Kitchen and Remembering Miss O’Keeffe.
My sister, Kate Lynch, is working on several manuscripts for the children’s and YA markets.
I also have three other siblings: Karin, a real estate broker and former thespian; John, an accountant and old book collector; and Chris, a dam-saving geophysicist. Together we swing from the branches of four biological parents and two ex-stepparents.