ABOUT ME
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EARLY YEARS
I’m Yvona, AKA Yvonne, and words really are my world! I began speaking at the age of one and was soon jabbering away in full sentences, asking a zillion questions. I remember hanging on every word as my journalist father and chemist mother read. When I was four, my preschool teacher found me reading the newspaper headlines over her shoulder. THREE CONTINENTS
I’m a first-generation immigrant American. We moved from Poland to Israel when I was seven and then to the USA when I was nine. I wrote about it in this and other yet unpublished poems (at right). An avid reader, I would come home with stacks of library books each week. Socially inept, I didn’t have many friends, so I found my friends in the books I read. Reading wasn’t something I was asked to do; it was what I wanted to do. When I had read everything of interest in the children’s room, my mom had to give special permission allowing me to take books from the adult section. She reports that, when engrossed in a book, buildings could fall in front of me and I would remain totally oblivious. I began writing at age ten, when I won a $25 bond for my essay, My Favorite American - despite the fact that we were immigrants, and I’d only been speaking English for a little over a year! Often, my good grades in school were not due to what I wrote, but how I wrote it. BECOMING A GROWN-UP - LIBRARIAN, MISSIONARY, AND WRITER
This love of books led me to become a librarian. A graduate of the State University of New York, I have a BA in Geography and a Masters in Library Science. I have worked as a librarian in prison, public, and academic libraries, and spent five years working in a missions role, setting up libraries for Bible colleges and seminaries in Eastern Europe. It was while working in Europe in 1993 that I contacted the editors of Christian Single magazine with a one-line query: Would your readers like to know what Christian singles in Poland are doing to minister to their brethren in Siberia? They said yes, and I sold my first magazine article, Happenings in Siberia. Since then, my articles in consumer magazines on topics ranging from health and cooking to disabilities and careers have helped many readers. I have also written several opinion pieces for my local paper. NEURODIVERSITY - AND A LOVE OF LANGUAGE
I am neurodiverse and hyperlexic – but my issues were unrecognized and glossed over while I was growing up. Because the language and analytical left side of my brain is more developed than my visual and motor right cerebral hemisphere, I need words in order to comprehend my world. It is difficult for me to understand a concept until it is put into words. I recall the day I stumbled on the website nldline.com while helping a library patron search for books on learning disabilities for math rather than language. My eyes opened wide. There were people with the same issues as me! What joy! MY WRITINGS
When I learned my condition has a name: Non-Verbal Learning Disability – I wrote a book about it! Employment for Individuals with Asperger Syndrome or Non-Verbal Learning Disability: Stories and Strategies, was published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers in 2004. Since then, I have had many opportunities to lecture to parents and teachers about learning disabilities and autism spectrum disorders. My next book, My Nine Lives, was co-authored with my mother, a Holocaust survivor. It is her memoir, and was published in 2011 by the Polish-Jewish Heritage Foundation of Canada. I’ve combined my writing talent with my love of food and cooking. My food column, North Country Kitchen, has run weekly since 2005 in the Adirondack Daily Enterprise. It was the inspiration for my third book, Garden Gourmet: Fresh & Fabulous Meals from your Garden, CSA or Farmers' Market. This cookbook contains more than 300 recipes arranged by season. I’ve also published 2 poetry chapbooks: Different (Foothills, 2017) and Adirondack Blue Seasons (CWP Collective Press, 2018) and have had poems published in journals and anthologies. I’ve turned my efforts towards writing for children and have taken classes through the Highlights Foundation, Children’s Book Academy, Lyrical Language Lab, and other online courses and workshops. My most recent books are Loon Summer and Good in the Midst of Evil. Read more on my books page. I’m a member of the Adirondack Center for Writing, SCBWI, a local poetry group, and several critique groups. Plus I'm part of the North Country Authors--here's my page on their site. |
Grades First grade in Warsaw, Then Tel-Aviv. Third grade in Haifa, new place to live. Fourth grade – Chicago, another new land. Kids talk to me, but I don’t understand. Fifth grade, once more another new school – In Philadelphia, they call me a fool. They call me names. I’m suspended - again. So many changes. We never remain. In eighth grade we move to upstate New York. They say, “You ain’t Jewish because you eat pork.” So many changes, many new places. So many people, always new faces. 
Canoeing is one of my favorite pastimes.
Excerpt from a longer poem I wrote about words: Words. Use them with care. To encourage, engage, enrich. It is said "The pen is mightier than the sword." Words Can change lives. You Can change the world One word at a time. 
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WHY DO I WRITE?
I write because I can’t not write. Sometimes I’m driven to write. The words just come.
Other times I write because I hope to make the world a better place. I want to make a positive difference in people’s lives. I want to follow in the footsteps of those authors who took me on adventures in my youth.
I live in the mountains of northern New York. When not writing or cooking, I enjoy swimming and paddling on warm summer days and cross-country skiing and snowshoeing when the ground is covered with a white blanket of snow.
I write because I can’t not write. Sometimes I’m driven to write. The words just come.
Other times I write because I hope to make the world a better place. I want to make a positive difference in people’s lives. I want to follow in the footsteps of those authors who took me on adventures in my youth.
I live in the mountains of northern New York. When not writing or cooking, I enjoy swimming and paddling on warm summer days and cross-country skiing and snowshoeing when the ground is covered with a white blanket of snow.
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Copyright 2020-2023 Yvona Fast
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