We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Patricia Smart, Rebecca Beech, and Katie Smart a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Patricia, Rebecca, Katie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?
Patricia: The idea was triggered by a surprise sighting while traveling through New England. Though I had long been a fan of historic houses, I didn’t expect to spot at the side of a country road an old rustic mailbox with handpainted letters spelling “Frost.” I asked my husband to pull over so I could peek around the bend of the driveway and verify that it really was where the poet Robert Frost had lived. I knew enough about the poet’s geography to believe it was possible but doubted because I hadn’t seen any promotional fanfare on the road before the mailbox came into view. The property overwhelmed me! It was not only sprawling and tranquil but open to the public! It also bordered a wood that inspired one of my favorite Frost poems. As we pulled away, it occurred to me that many great minds sprung from small US towns like that one, some of which depend financially on history-seeking visitors like me. So I set out to create literary road maps, like treasure hunts, to help readers find these gems across the US and, hopefully, leverage support for them. Since I wanted to leave no stone unturned and sought insights from more people, I invited two people who shared the same passion to join me in creating Author Adventures, requested and received sponsorship through the John Corcoran Foundation, and the rest is history!
Rebecca: I’ve known Patricia for years and always admired her passion for literacy. Knowing my educational background in literature and elementary school teaching experience, she reached out to me when Author Adventures was in development. She wondered if I would like to be involved in contributing content focused on literary sites in the U.S. Having recently visited several historic homes of authors in Minnesota, I was immediately drawn to the idea and my answer was an enthusiastic “Yes!” My interest was also personal. When my children were young, we enjoyed choosing books set where we traveled. Joining Author Adventures added a new dimension to my appreciation for the connection between reading and place: understanding authors and their works better by exploring the homes, neighborhoods, parks, and schools that formed them and made them the writers they came to be.
Katie: I’ve always loved literature, geography, and history. Author Adventures combines those in a really distinctive way. Some of the homes and similar locations we profile are places that don’t often receive a lot of attention, so I like being part of providing people with new travel ideas where they can learn about literary history that they may have otherwise missed.
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?
Patricia: I always enjoyed reading and dreamt from around age 10 of working in book publishing. By the time I was in my twenties, I worked for a publishing company that was headed by the founder of the Literary Landmarks Association. His interest in the weird and wonderful minds of historic figures inspired me to think up ways to address gaps in knowledge that may be noticeable on the ground but sometimes missed by other organizations.
Katie: I was asked to create the maps on the website. The idea was to combine the individual locations for each state into one route that could potentially be driven like a road trip, which I did by arranging each state’s locations into a logical order and embedding the resulting map. Once I started working on the maps, I also began researching new locations and writing about author sites that I’d visited and the other partners hadn’t as well as some I heard about while living on the East Coast. I’m proud that we were able to find, research, and map over 300 locations spanning all 50 states and DC, which is more than any other resource we’ve found.
Rebecca: I am proud of the fact that, from the beginning, we only used our own photographs or those of our readers. We don’t just take images from the internet. This gives our media a personalized authenticity I love, as both a writer and hobbyist photographer. I do most of the Instagram posts, which has allowed us to follow and connect with quite a few people who have related content, some of which may focus on literature and travel, inspirational literary quotes, literary spots across the globe, and “bookstagram” photos of books in varieties of places. Seeing the breadth of content has been interesting and stimulating.
At the same time, I appreciate the scope of our project because no one is doing quite what we are doing. Our niche focus on US literary sites is narrower than some, but it allows us to highlight and continue to find a very wide variety of places we can visit with relative ease. We also have a broad focus on writers of all kinds of genres, from novels, poems, plays, memoirs, histories, political treatises, autobiographies, to children’s books. Within this vision, we have highlighted over 300 literary spots throughout the US and hope to eventually visit all of them!
Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?
Patricia: I noticed that mainstream search engines usually only produced mainstream results at the top of their link lists. In hindsight, I wish we had been aware of more research one-stops for the full gamut of US literary voices, especially writers of color, that make up our country’s history. We’re still working on improving the mix of voices we profile, and our more recent research has been the most fascinating because it connects a lot of dots.
Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?
Patricia: Rebecca has been an amazing partner because she’s fearless about travel. Her back stories don’t always make it into what’s published but are truly inspiring. She’s braved several feet of Minnesota subzero snow to visit the bookstore of Native American writer Louise Erdrich. She also cold-called and met up with the mayor of the town where Maya Angelou grew up who led Rebecca to the paths of the famous author — her childhood church, the family store, even fields by the train tracks that divided the city. Rebecca also went to the Langston Hughes apartment in New York, even though it had shut down, and to many remote places across the US.
Katie lived in DC when it was shut down during the pandemic and during the tumultuous 2020 presidential election season, when we were all hunkered down in our homes, missing out on travel. She still inspired us by visiting Capitol Books and the latest Library of Congress exhibits as soon as they reopened. That’s resilience!
I’m grateful to all the places that stay open when it’s hard. One of my favorites was Molly’s Inn on Chincoteague Island in Virginia, which welcomed our visit as soon as the worst hardships of the Covid era ended. I was also impressed with the Oscar Anderson House in Anchorage, Alaska, which arranged for staff to stay past closing time for us on a holiday weekend.
Rebecca: It has been very satisfying to me to search out and bring attention to literary history with the goal of enriching local communities and reminding people of the hidden gems all around them. I’ve also had a tremendous amount of fun sharing these travels with my husband, adult children, and now a new generation, my grandchildren.
Contact Info:
- Website: authoradventures.org
- Instagram: instagram.com/authoradventures
- Facebook: facebook.com/authoradventures
- Youtube: youtube.com/@authoradventuresroadtrips
Image Credits
All photos provided courtesy of Author Adventures