We recently connected with Margaret Kirk and have shared our conversation below.

Margaret, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

My mission and passion is to highlight women throughout history who have been under recognized or completely written out. Myra Pollack Sadler, who was an educator, said: “Each time a girl opens a book and reads a womanless history, she learns that she is worth less.” Stories connect us, like threads create a tapestry. They stitch us securely into a multigenerational quilt of life and community. History helps us learn who we are, but when we don’t know our own history as women in a broad sense, our power and dreams are immediately diminished. History must tell the whole story; knowing the achievements of women expands our sense of what is real and what is possible.
Most of the women I research and choose to write about are unknown, or relatively unknown. It is my goal to take them from the dusty archives where they have been fossilized, shine a light on them, breathe new life into them, and introduce them to the world. It’s that simple.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I have always championed the underdog, often a woman. I was a single parent raising three boys, working two or thee jobs and going to school full time, carrying a full load. My undergraduate degree was in Women’s Studies and Family Development, and my Masters was in Feminism and Social Justice, both from Goddard College.

My main work was with single, head of household, poverty stricken women for almost thirty years. During that time we were all looking for role models! I would find one obscure woman after another and make note of her for further exploration. Eventually, in semi-retirement, I had the time to flesh out some of the women whose names or partial stories I had collected over the years. That is where the first book, They Persisted, originated. The second book, took five more years of research and exploration, It really took on a life of its own and resulted in, They Roared.

I want women, but also the world, to know about these remarkable individuals who have been obscured by time. This is not about “me,” I am just the conduit. I have often felt these remarkable women speaking through me. The feedback that I receive from both men and women, often assures me that I am accomplishing what I set out to do.

What do you find most rewarding about being a creative?

The most rewarding aspect of this work for me is when people get it. When they read my books and feel inspired, or when they want more information about a particular woman or their work. It delights me. When I seen a young girl or woman realize what fantastic accomplishments their forebears have accomplished. These are the things that nurture me. When an older gentleman comments by email that he never knew his distant relative had accomplished so much! When another older gentleman calls me and tells me he loved the book, didn’t know about a single women therein, and has ordered a copy of one of a book one of the women I highlighted wrote. Those things make my heart sing. Those are my rewards. This is accomplished through a blog, stage pieces, a monthly column in the Free Press, and the books.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

On the advice of several seasoned and well known author friends, I self published the second edition of the first book and the second book. I was (and still am) relatively green when it comes to technology, and I CAN NOT edit to save my life. I get caught up in the emotion of a story and read right over embarrassing typos. I had an editor and a tech person who handled the formatting and downloading. What my editor and I did now realize is that Word has different platforms. It was an absolute nightmare! Our copies did not match, errors corrected were on only one copy, corrections didn’t hold and silly things like parenthesis, would not copy correctly. The first part was wonky, going the wrong way on every single quote in copy for BOTH books. Although we didn’t realize it, we were working in different editions of Word! We spent untold hours and much anguish going back through the documents. This delayed release time not to mention what it did for our morale. We spent literally months putting things in order! We wish we had known!

Contact Info:

• Website: herstory-online.com
• Facebook: Margaret Kirk

Image Credits
The first photo of me credit is Jodi Jharling at the Zu Gallery. The Wall Ms. Chen.