Renee Skudra

I’m a six-year-plus transplant from northern California who loves living in the south with its emphasis on history, family, faith and hospitality. I’m big on southern writers and am currently reading Fred Chappell’s I Am One of You Forever and Look Homeward Angel by Thomas Wolfe. I’m inspired by the virtues of kindness and humility. I love being in the mountains (although always worried about running into snakes!) and the water. You can find me hanging out at Salem Lake with a camera always in tow. I love foreign films, country western music, fast horses, slow dancing, men with dimpled chins, handmade quilts, salsa dancing, anything dark chocolate and will drive miles and miles for bittersweet chocolate mousse or flourless chocolate tortes! I grew up in Toronto and upstate New York, love when it snows and believe in the old Danish saying: “There’s no such thing as bad weather – only the wrong clothes.” I live with my son who is a Civil War historian and our Bichon Frise who loves people but is terrified of cats. I tell myself to always work hard because as the saying goes “askin’ ain’t gettin’.”