Sandra Knauf

About Me

I have been writing for about twenty years. I started in journalism, fell in love with creative writing during a creative writing class in my 2nd stint in college in the late 1980s and early 1990s (I finally graduated in 1991, six months pregnant with my first daughter). Writing and art hooked me - completely and irreversibly. I found my niche, garden writing, and fiction writing that has an environmentalist slant, as a young mom and beginning gardener about fifteen years ago.

I started writing a zine, Greenwoman, a few years ago and am currently in the process of making it into a bigger, more nationally published magazine.

If you are into the plant world, nature, gardening - I'd love to connect with you. Please check out my blog at www.greenwomanzine.com

Why do you write?

I am compelled to write about the beauty and wonder of the natural world and our deep connection to it. I write in hopes of turning people on to Nature and, specifically, gardening (gardening because it's the most perfect, exquisite connection that we can have close to home). I want to open minds and I want to thrill. I write to try to share the beauty, wonder, hilarity, sexuality, joy, danger, culture, history, politics, craziness, etc. of the natural world. The things I see are just way too cool to keep to myself.

Any favorite authors? Books?

I hate this part as I'm all over the charts. My favorite American writer is Mark Twain and I've read (and loved) a lot of the classics as I majored in English at UCCS. Zora Neale Hurston is my favorite female American author - I named one of my daughters after her. My other daughter is named Lily (after the flower). I love Ray Bradbury - his books were important to me as a child. All Over Creation by Ruth Ozeki made a big impact on me as a garden/environmental writer.

Contemporary - I love everything by Michael Pollan, I love Barbara Kingsolver's work. Amy Stewart rocks.

Favorite books lately: The Garden of Invention (about Luther Burbank - FASCINATING!), Farm City, Artisan Farming...I'm reading an old book by Gene Stratton-Porter - Girl of the Limberlost, because a reviewer compared my writing to hers. I just read Orange Mint and Honey, a very impressive first novel, set in Denver, by Carleen Brice. I am working on Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species...I read widely and weirdly and never have enough time to read as much as I'd like.