Erin and Phillip Stead met and fell in love in a Dearborn high school, struggled to make it in the Big Apple, then finally returned to Michigan, where their children's book
A Sick Day for Amos McGee landed the Caldecott Medal for illustration. Turns out Ann Arbor was their lucky charm.
Excerpt:"They have lived the past three years across from the Ann Arbor train station in a converted barn once used to store coal and railroad vehicles.
They have one of three apartments in the building. They use the first floor of the two-story unit as a studio.
They settled in the southeast Michigan city three years ago to be near family and to escape the kind of cramped living quarters typically occupied by aspiring children's authors in New York. "Michigan was a much easier place to make ends meet," she says.
Writing recently on her blog, she said: "When we accidentally moved back to Michigan, I think Phil and I were defeated [and a little broke] but so was the state." It was the height of the financial crisis. Now, she wrote, she is happy to "return to our big barn in the little city. It is hard to argue with the smell of pine needles and fall leaves and affection I have come to realize that I possess for this … state."
Read the rest of the article
here.
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.