Ten Things You Didn’t Know About Fanny Fern {Guest #Author: Debra Brenegan + Giveaway}

1. Fanny Fern was the person who first coined the saying, “The quickest way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”

2. Fanny Fern’s books were American and European best-sellers – outselling even the

blockbuster of the era, Uncle Tom’s Cabin.

3. Fanny Fern earned the staggering sum of $100 for each newspaper article she wrote when she first started writing for the New York Ledger in 1855.

4. The Saturday Evening Post is among the many periodicals Fanny Fern wrote for during her writing career.

5. Writing was not Fanny Fern’s career of choice. As a single mother, she first tried to earn a living wage as a seamstress, then as a milliner, and even tried to get a teaching job before she finally resorted to writing.

6. Fanny Fern was married three times – the first time to her sweetheart who died young, the second time to an abusive man who she daringly left, and the third time to a man eleven-years her junior who became her equal partner.

7. Fanny Fern wrote in favor of a myriad of women’s issues, although she didn’t go to a single Women’s Rights Convention nor officially align herself with the women’s rights movement of the era.

8. Fanny Fern served as a literary mentor to Walt Whitman.

9. Fanny Fern was friends with Harriet Beecher Stowe, Catharine Beecher and Harriet Jacobs, to name but a few of the literary names she associated with.

10. Fanny Fern’s motto was “Speak the Truth and Shame the Devil.”

ABOUT THE AUTHOR…Debra Brenegan grew up in the Milwaukee area and graduated with a B.A. in journalism from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She worked as a journalist and taught at Milwaukee Area Technical College before beginning her graduate work. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in English/Creative Writing from The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, where she also taught. She teaches English and Women’s Studies at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri. For her fiction, she has received a Ragdale residency and was a recent finalist for the John Gardner Memorial Fiction Prize, The Cincinnati Review’s Schiff Prose Prize, and the Crab Creek Review Fiction Prize. Her work has recently appeared or is forthcoming in Calyx, Tampa Review, Natural Bridge, The Laurel Review, RE:AL, The Southern Women’s Review, The Cimarron Review, Milwaukee Magazine, Phoebe, and other publications. Debra Brenegan’s novel, Shame the Devil, is a historical account of nineteenth-century American writer Fanny Fern (SUNY Press, Excelsior Editions). She is currently working on another novel, set in Missouri, and on a short story collection. During the school year, Debra lives in a 130-year-old house in Fulton with her husband, Steve, and their elderly cat. They spend summers and school breaks in their native Milwaukee. When not teaching, writing, spending time with family or driving back and forth to Wisconsin, Debra enjoys cooking, gardening, reading and traveling. You can visit her website at www.debrabrenegan.com or visit her at Twitter at www.twitter.com/dbrenegan or Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/#!/debra.brenegan; https://www.facebook.com/#!/shame.the.devil.book.

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