Finding Home: How Americans Prevail

Sharon Lockhart speaks to author and former Kansas Citian, Sally Ooms about her new book, Finding Home: How Americans Prevail.

Ms. Ooms is currently on a book tour and will be at Unity Temple on the Plaza on August 20th

Sally Ooms has been a print journalist for 30 years—a reporter, correspondent and editor for publications in Oregon, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Missouri and Kansas. She has covered spot news, government, education issues, the arts, mental and other health concerns, business, sports and local crises during times of war, and has written hundreds of feature articles and investigative reports. Among the publications she has worked for are: the Sacramento Bee, the Las Vegas Daily Optic, the Albuquerque Journal, the Santa Fe New Mexican, New Mexico Business Weekly, Springs Magazine (Colorado Springs), the Kansas City Star and The Sun newspaper (Johnson County, KS).

Concurrently, she put out a monthly publication for the Sacramento River Delta in the 1970s; was the publisher of a visitor’s guide to Northeastern New Mexico in the 1980s; and worked as a business writer researching topics of interest to the banking community in New Mexico and El Paso in the 1990s. Also in the 1990s, she did public relations for the United World College of the American West in Montezuma, NM, an international school for teenagers from around the world.

She has received awards for editorial writing, spot news, features and investigative reporting from the Associated Press of New Mexico, the New Mexico Press Association and New Mexico Press Women. She served on the board of the New Mexico Press Association and was the president of the Associated Press Advisory Board in New Mexico.

After attending the University of Barcelona, she worked as a teacher in Spain and traveled in Europe for three years. She studied literature and writing at the University of Missouri, Stanford University and the University of Oregon; and holds a Bachelor of Science degree in public administration from the University of San Francisco.

She has given introductory speeches about Finding Home: How Americans Prevail to organizations like Veterans for Peace. She belongs to the Society of the Muse of the Southwest literary organization in Taos and has served as a volunteer coordinator for Amnesty International, a cook for homeless men in New Mexico, and a hospice volunteer for Crossroads Hospice in Kansas City, Missouri.

After several years of traveling for interviews with people who have been displaced, she recently moved to San Francisco to complete and publish the book Finding Home: How Americans Prevail.

She and partner Keith Palmer have ridden their BMW motorcycle from her hometown of Kansas City to Alaska, up and down the Canadian and American Rockies, to the North Shore of Lake Superior, and on trips around the Southwest. In 2007, they traveled both islands of New Zealand for seven weeks in a camper van, rode a motorcycle around Tasmania and spent a month wandering Australia.

A blues enthusiast, she recently started the New Mexico Blues Society with two friends. She is the vice president of the group.

The author has called 22 locations home.

http://www.findinghomestories.com/


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