Paula has been a professional writer for more than thirty years, and has had her fiction published in The North American Review, Playgirl magazine, Coast, the Arkansas Review (see short story), and other literary journals. Her articles and essays have appeared in Organic Gardening, The Mother Earth News, Yankee magazine, Countryside, The New York Times, the New Jersey Monthly, and others. Her poetry has appeared in Barrow Street, Earth’s Daughters, Cottonwood, the Journal of New Jersey Poets, 13th Moon, The Midwest Quarterly and the new renaissance. Her creative nonfiction appeared in the literary journal, Kansas City Voices, and her latest publications include an essay on coming-of-age in Herstry, and “The Long Road Home,” (see essay) in Snowy Egret, the Oldest Independent U.S. Journal of Nature Writing. Her poetry book is Tossing Off the Gloves, and her children’s book is titled The Blueberry Girl.
Paula has been a Media Instructor and Writing Instructor at Brookdale Community College, Lincroft, New Jersey, and has taught writing workshops at the Island Heights Artist’s Guild, and various Young Author Conferences for many years. She was a featured poet and taught workshops at the Long Branch Poetry Festival, and the annual Walt Whitman Poetry Festival in Ocean Grove, New Jersey. She teaches both adult and children’s poetry/writing workshops at libraries, schools and bookstores. Paula teaches journal writing workshops at Mary’s Place, a retreat at the Jersey shore for women battling cancer, and has taught at various yoga centers.
Paula has a Master’s degree in Media Studies from The New School for Social Research, New York, N.Y., and a B.S. in Journalism and Mass Communications from Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas. She is a member of the National Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI), and the International Women’s Writing Guild (IWWG), and the Monday Writer’s Workshop.
Paula has directed a number of readings with her woman’s writing group, performing an original poetry piece, “Love, Life and Laundry,” at colleges and coffee houses for Women’s History Month. Paula has been a featured poetry reader for the Black Box Women’s Theatre Festival in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and has performed her original monologue, “Nothing’s Permanent,” in the play “Some Bodies.” Paula has performed her poetry with the Provincetown Fringe Festival.
Paula’s article, “The Mother of Mulch,” a profile of Ruth Stout, gardener extraordinaire, was collected in an anthology by Yankee Books, Those Eccentric Yankees. Her poem, “Shell,” (see here) appeared in the HOWL OF SORROW Memorial Anthology, poems about New Jersey and Hurricane Sandy, 2015. Paula has volunteered locally in the gardens of the FoodBank of Monmouth County – “I designed and planted their first herb garden.” She has played piano as a volunteer at the Jersey Shore Hospital – “including a piano donated to the hospital upon which George Gershwin composed ‘Rhapsody in Blue,’ a piece I admit I cannot begin to play!”
After many years on their farm, Paula moved to the Jersey Shore with her husband, Peter Falk, a veterinarian. They have two sons, Turner and Crosby, and three delightful grandchildren.