SHORT VERSION - Bristol was born in Alaska, and named after Bristol Bay, where her parents fished commercially. Later, she was raised in Southcentral Alaska, splitting time between her family’s off-the-grid homestead at Flat Horn Lake, and attending school in Anchorage. A lifelong reader with a love for creative writing but without formal schooling in it, Bristol blundered ahead and wrote a book anyway. And it was published, so it all worked out. Yeah.

She now lives in Portland, Oregon, with her husband, dog, and way too many books.

LONG VERSION (for you gluttons for punishment)

Bristol started her published writing career in the first grade in Alaska, as part of the esteemed poetry journal “Pencil Full of Stars,” which required only that the student attend an Anchorage School District school and, I believe, fulfill a quota of student material the teachers had to submit for consideration. Bristol was published through this cutthroat process nearly every year.

Bristol went on to enjoy some incredible English teachers throughout her K-12 education—teachers who told her she was talented and encouraged her love of writing (and not just because they were paid to, she is sure). When it came to college, however, she was told “English is not a major.” It was this encouragement that led her to major in business and build a career that allowed her to move out, and stay out, of her parents’ house.

Then Bristol appeared in Portland from out of nowhere (that is, Alaska) in 2003, pursuing a second career in a field that—like her career before that—involved a lot of writing but was not, as was important to certain influential family members, a “career in writing,” and that was a career in law. Yuk.

After her brief stint in law, she did some business counseling, taught some classes, owned a couple of bars, then the pandemic started so she wrote a book, which Tortoise Books generously offered to publish. Fortunately, a lifetime of reading seems to have made up for at least some of the lack of formal writing education. And that is the illustrious story of Bristol’s creative writing career—in elementary school and today with a bunch of work-related nothing writing in between. Surely, a story that will be told and retold down through the ages.

That said, now that the hounds have been released, she has one published book (Afterward), one new book submitted for publication, two other works in progress, and a thousand more ideas in her head screaming to get out. So, stay tuned.