Like her mystery series heroine Sarah McKinney, Exall grew up in England. She lived in France and Belgium before moving to Atlanta where she practiced employment law with leading firms and as in-house counsel. In 2006, she moved to the Pacific Northwest, and abandoned the law to devote herself to writing.
She has published three Sarah McKinney mysteries. The second and third books in the series (A Dangerous Descent and A Splintered Step) won CIBA Clue Awards for international mystery.
A Splintered Step was also a semi-finalist in Screencraft’s Cinematic Books competition.
As well as the Sarah McKinney series, Exall’s work has been published in anthologies: Memory into Memoir, Whatcom Writes, The Kumquat Challenge and So Much Depends Upon. Her memoir An Azure Year won the 2017 Solas Award for Best Travel Writing in the travel + food category.
Turning to historical fiction, Exall published a novelette, The Elgin Letters, set in Victorian Yorkshire, and has just contracted with the Wild Rose Press for publication of a novel inspired by a true story of a Dutch diplomat who saved the lives of Jewish refugees during World War II: Daughters of Riga is coming soon.
“-Still the profound change
has come upon them: rooted, they
grip down and begin to awaken.”
So ends the first poem in William Carlos Williams’ quirky, iconic Spring and All, published in 1923. One hundred years later, the Red Wheelbarrow Writers Spring and All 2023 anthology takes up its challenge: “Profound change” lies at the heart of each piece. Some authors write with raffish humor, some with wry nostalgia, some with elegiac undercurrents. These authors display a dazzling array of poetry and prose: art seeking to articulate insight. Across a broad canvas of expression, Spring and All 2023 writers contend with life’s “Aha ” moments. That uplifting “Aha ” might take place in a train rattling across a foreign landscape, or in front of an enigmatic lilac bush, or during a Midwestern summer afternoon with a baseball game wafting in from the radio, even on an ordinary driveway. Spring and All 2023 offers readers a sense of awakening, sparking deeper understanding, renewed wonder, and refreshed reverence.
This interview was intriguing. I have read many WWII novels, but none about Riga. I can’t wait to read it.