Karin with mom, aunt and grandma

That One Thanksgiving with the Whipped Cream Thing

Karin Kallmaker Cheers & Chocolate 5 Comments

Meet Marie

My maternal grandmother, Marie, was a baker. I was very little, but I clearly remember going to the county fair one year and instead of going to the rides, we went right to the venue for the baking competition. My grandmother said, “Well, I’ll be,” at the sight of her name written on a huge piece of butcher paper tacked to the wall.

grandma marie circa 1965

She’d won the prize for All-Around Best, well, Everything. She won two more times in subsequent years. This happened later in her life when baking was a serious hobby. She’d learned to bake through pure necessity in rural Oregon and California. She had no car, the stores were always a long way off, and you made meals out of what you had. She once told me that in WWII during rationing, with only two kids, she always had shoe coupons to spare, and she would trade them for sugar coupons. That meant she could put up her fruit crop for winter – peaches and apricots if I remember correctly. Even if the main meal was lean there were treats. Read More

books and boots dallas gcls logo

Books and Boots Gather in Dallas November 10!

Karin Kallmaker Events and Appearances 0 Comments

Feeling as if the barbarians are at the gate, and it’s nonstop? Gather with likeminded people, get some hugs, breathe easy. I recommend it with all my heart, and it’s how I’m coping in this very difficult time. If you can get yourself to Dallas on November 10, I will hug you and that’s a promise!

It’ll be a great day with a lot of wonderful authors you can talk to, and plenty of other readers who like what you like: stories about women who love women. Read More

michelle yeoh in crazy rich asians

Crazy Rich Asians – a RomCom that Takes Love Seriously

Karin Kallmaker Cheers & Chocolate, Craft of Writing 2 Comments

Box office blockbuster Crazy Rich Asians, which I saw this week, succeeds so well as a romantic comedy that I was left wondering how it is that so many romcoms don’t. I think this is the core of the problem:

You can poke fun at the couple’s foibles, and you can put them in awkward situations, but you can’t make light of love itself.

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Spoonbridge and Cherry sculpture

Land o’ Book Love – Upcoming Events in Minneapolis

Karin Kallmaker Events and Appearances 0 Comments

Road Trip!

Hello Land of 10,000 Lakes! The North Star State! And home to an astonishing quantity of out and proud queer writers. My wife and I are undertaking an epic trek this fall, and it includes a swing through the Twin Cities where I’ll be reading my work and talking about books at two different official venues.

There will also be unofficial meetups in Detroit, Ann Arbor and Stratford that I’ve announced on Facebook, so visit the link if those locations intrigue you. Read More