The Devotion of a Dog, in Fiction and in Life
Nancy Polk Hall on the dog who sat with her through her first novel, the one who walked into her second, and why fiction’s dogs carry such honest weight.
The Quiet Comfort of Coming Home
What coming home taught me about the story I’m writing. After weeks in Portugal, France, Germany, and Belgium, Nancy Polk Hall reflects on homecoming — and what the Continent revealed about 1960s England.
What the Lisbon Book Fair Taught Me About the Language Books Actually Speak
Nancy Polk Hall at the Lisbon Book Fair: on author camaraderie, the inspiration of being surrounded by stories, and what books communicate beyond words.
The Best Research Isn’t in a Library — It’s in the Places That Still Remember
Nancy Polk Hall on how traveling through Portugal, Belgium, and France’s Moselle Valley becomes the living research behind her historical fiction.
The Aga and I: A 1960s Perspective
My mother is a woman who can handle almost anything with grace and good humor. England in the mid-1960s tested that theory considerably. To me, as a child, it was all adventure — rolling Oxfordshire hills, fields of wild daffodils, a barn on our property the locals proudly called “the new barn,” which had been […]
The Places That Made Me a Writer: From a French Village to the Pages of Call of the Blackbird
Nancy Polk Hall reflects on how growing up in France and England — and returning to Europe as an adult — shaped her storytelling and brought history alive on the page.
The Letters We Keep: What My Grandmother’s Weekly Correspondence Taught Me About Memory
An essay on weekly letter-writing, family archives, and the framed letter by my dressing table — how handwritten mail shaped the way I write fiction.
Three Ways I’ve Learned to Tell the Same Story –And Why Each One Matters
Historical fiction author Nancy Polk Hall explores how the same story transforms across formats — a novel, a spoken word, and the intimate Letters from Caroline series.
When a Book Ends but the Characters Don’t — On Missing the People You Lived With While Writing a Book
What happens when a book is finished and the characters you’ve lived with for years go quiet? Nancy Polk Hall reflects on the friends she finds in her fiction.