Barbara Lockard

I grew up Catholic, lower middle class and German on the west side of Cincinnati, Ohio. After attending St. Catharine's Elementary School and Mother of Mercy High School, I took the most obvious path and dropped in and out of several colleges, until finally earning an undergrad degree at age 36. In my adult years, I managed to settle in Findlay, Ohio, the only place more religious and more conservative than my hometown. My first book is a product of the pandemic, offering an opportunity during stay-at-home orders to be creative, rather than psychotic. What began as observations on 2020 weirdness, morphed into a compendium of essays on my childhood experiences; fighting the Red Menace alongside an army of nuns, collecting soda bottles, surviving Price Hill Day at Coney Island and trying to convince my father to invest in a chinchilla ranch.