Peggy Ann Barnett is an author, photographer and poet.

I grew up in Queens, New York in a family defined by the Holocaust. Reading and the visual arts were always a refuge for me. After a public education at P.S. 89, and Music and Art High School, The Cooper Union for Science and Art, I decided to pursue a creative career in photography.

My photography studio was in Manhattan on 22nd Street, just down the block from the Flatiron Building. I worked there with my husband Ron. I raised my daughter Emma between the darkroom and strobe lights. There were magazine assignments in the 1970’s, corporate annual reports for the Fortune 500 in the 1970- 80’s, stock photography for The Image Bank, and lots of creative assignments from great designers. In 1978, I purchased the nine-story commercial loft building in which my studio was located and turned it into residential apartments— I was one of the first to do this in New York; it took four years of aggravation, construction and renovation, and an endless amount of time persuading people it was a viable investment.

All the while, I wrote poetry. Working with words uses a totally different part of the brain than working with a camera, but it makes my poetry very visual, full of images that express my emotions. After moving to the Pacific Northwest in 2006, I published my poetic memoir On Your Left! which describes growing up in 1950’s Queens, my marriage to Ron, Emma’s birth when I was 43, and the shock of moving from the Big Apple to the Pacific Northwest. At first, it seemed to be another country. I now live in Redmond, WA. and have wonderful friends who have taught this city girl to hike. I have fallen in love with the lowlands, rivers and forests of the Cascade mountains.

For five years I attended meditation with Thai Monks of the Forest at the Atammayatarama Monastery in Woodinville, Wa. After two years of classes studying the Dhamma with Abbott Ajahn Ritthi, I earned my Secondary Level Certificate of Dhamma Study from the Thai Royal Ecclesiatical Board of Education. Studying the writings of Ajahn Chah helps me find equanimity in life’s turmoil.

The New York section of this website includes some of my favorite B/W images. I have endless memories of quiet hours spent in the darkroom printing them, listening to WBAI and the murmer of running water washing the prints. They are photographic essays that just happened as I lived my life in the city and wandered around for years.

Bitter Fruit takes place in the 12th century. Because my grandmother told me the old Grimm folk tales (in the original German, and they were indeed Grimm!), the Middle Ages have always been a part of my sub-conscious life. I spent many contented hours taking photographs in The Cloisters in Fort Tryon Park in upper Manhattan. Ron and I loved wandering around old castles and medieval cities. In the Cluny museum in Paris, I sat for hours contemplating the Lady and the Unicorn tapestries.

This historical novel came to be written because of a wonderful independent bookstore in Eugene, Oregon. I was there reading as a featured poet. Wandering around I found a used volume of Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours by Frederic L. Cheyette. (©2001 Cornell University Press). That was it. I was hooked. After four years of research, which included traveling to the North Pole in Sweden to see the Aurora Borealis in person, a month in Narbonne, France, and 2,000 miles of driving through the Languedoc (thank you Red), I finished it. Unfortunately, Ron didn’t live to see it.

I have begun writing Bitter Seeds, a second volume featuring Ermengard of Narbonne and Eleanore of Aquitaine.