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 […]
How an English Childhood Shaped Death at Brookhaven
Nancy Polk Hall traces her new mystery Death at Brookhaven back to a 13-room Oxfordshire farmhouse, a ginger cat, and an England she absorbed at age eight.
The Names Women Left Behind: What Surnames Reveal About the Stories We Almost Lost
Nancy Polk Hall on what surnames — especially the ones women gave up — reveal about forgotten histories, and why she researches names as obsessively as she researches events.
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.
The Book for a Long Spring Afternoon — Why This Is the Season to Finally Read Call of the Blackbird
Spring changes what we want from a book. Nancy Polk Hall on why this is the season for Call of the Blackbird — and the kind of reading that stays with you.