Annie Abbott Books

Letters Home

From 2017-2020 I wrote a weekly column for my hometown newspaper: The Clay County Advocate Press. One vivid memory from my childhood is of my dad napping on the couch, the newspaper draped across his chest where it dropped as his eyes closed. Smitty, the newspaper’s reporter then owner, personified the smalltown journalist who wrote up details from all the town hall meetings and covered school athletics in depth along with action photos. Decades later, I hoped my column could be a bridge between the folks I grew up around and the life and perspectives I had gained since I left in 1986. But the gap was wide between my progressive values and my hometown crowd, so after a bumpy beginning, I learned new ways to tell 700-word stories that better spanned our worlds. In the end, I learned more through three years of weekly column writing that I could have ever hoped to impart to others.