About Me — Michelle McAfee

Writer. Photographer. Musician. Mountain-loving chocolate hound.

Photo by my friend Ellie Stephano, 2010–1st summer in Alaska

My first rejection as a writer came from a Reader’s Digest editor. I was eleven years old, living in the Rocky Mountains west of Denver. My English teacher, Mr. Upzack, sent a note home asking my parents if he could submit my homework assignment to the publication. It didn’t go well.

I wish that story were sitting in a scrapbook somewhere. I remember it was about a bear family with two cubs. The narrator was one of the kid cubs. I don’t know what kind of adventure I took them on, but at least I got an A on the assignment.

Our family of four built a log house by hand.

The following year we moved to a homestead in northwest Montana where bears were the real deal. My brother and I ruined our jeans that summer scooting down logs, peeling the sap-soaked bark with a draw-knife, and I learned to play guitar on my mother’s 12-string Epiphone.

There was one guitar songbook in the house, and after a month I was bored, so I wrote my own songs to pass the time. We lived 30 miles from town, 15 miles from my nearest middle school friend.

Music took me to Nashville in my early 20’s.