Beverly Beckham has been a storyteller and columnist for nearly 50 years. She wrote weekly for the Quincy Patriot Ledger for eight years, three times a week for The Boston Herald for 20 years and worked as a Sunday columnist for the Boston Globe, one of the top 10 newspapers in the U.S, for 20 years. Her columns have also appeared in many of the Chicken Soup for the Soul book series
Beckham is also the author of A Gift of Time, a collection of personal essays; Back Then, A Memoir of Childhood, The Best of Beverly Beckham, a Boston Globe e-book. And Love Stories: 21 for 21, a collection of columns about Down syndrome and her granddaughter, Lucy. Beckham is noted not only for columns which give a voice to people who cannot speak for themselves, but also for her ability to make her readers feel seen and appreciated and understood.
FAVORITE TOPICS
I like writing about the eternals: family, friendship, love, work, hopes, dreams, life, death, feelings and events which, even as the world changes at a dizzying pace, do not. A young person in love for the first time is a young person in love for the first time, whether it’s 1820 or 1920 or 2020. I love how these eternals connect us.
FAVORITE WRITINGS
Many of my favorite columns were written by other writers. For years, I’ve cut out essays and poems and saved them in a file. Now I cut and save them digitally. I’ve learned a lot from other writers. I’m going to share my favorite columns and poems and some of what I’ve learned here.
WHO WANTS TO SHARE AN ESSAY?
I’m thinking this should be a page for people who write to share their essays. I coach writers and I am surprised at how many unsung writers there are in this world. If you have something to share, please send via the contact page.
Quotes not only inspire me. They also intrigue me because they offer both history and a kind of immortality. “Wee steps and slow,” my Scottish mother-in-law always said. It means take one step at a time. Don’t look at the whole picture. The whole picture is too overwhelming. We say “Wee steps and slow” so often in our family that even the great-grandchildren, who never met her, who were born years after she died, when faced with an overwhelming task, say, “Wee steps and slow.” They persevere. ~ Beverly Beckham
