Coco Picard discusses THE HEALING CIRCLE in HenLitCentral Interview

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your published book (s).
I am a writer, cartoonist, and curator. I started the Green Lantern Press, a non-profit art space and publisher in Chicago and ran it for about seventeen years. It’s a great city—the art and lit community is warm, supportive, and brilliant. A great tradition of artist-run culture makes ideas seem possible. In 2019 I moved to New Mexico with my family. We’d just closed the gallery in Chicago and sold our building. I wanted to focus on writing fiction and comics. I’d been working on The Healing Circle steadily for years in fits and starts. The book follows a mother whose terminal diagnosis makes her leave the country (and children) in search of a miracle cure. In 2020, I was a Book Ends fellow at Stony Brook University and won Red Hen Press’s Women’s Prose Prize, both for The Healing Circle. Those opportunities helped me focus, revise, and complete the manuscript.