What's All This Then?

Mrs. G. is Heather Gattuccio.  She was born on a mountain top in Memphis , Tennessee, greenest state in the land of the free. Raised in Frayser so’s she knew ev’ry tree, she kilt her a b’ar when she was only three.  Hills, that is. Swimmin’ pools, movie stars.

Mrs. G. was a child of the seventies so she came from a broken home (they were all the rage), watched entirely too much television and learned to bake cake in a microwave.

At sixteen, Mrs. G. moved with her mother and her mother’s third husband (the good one—number two was the bad one) to Tigard, Oregon. She attended college in Eugene, Oregon and has lived the remainder of her adult life in Raleigh, North Carolina and Seattle, Washington, her home for the last decade.

Mrs. G. is 45 46 and has been married for 24 years to her first husband. They have two kids, ages 17 18 and 21 22. She homeschooled them until her daughter went to college and her son went to public high school. Neither of them is a shut-in or improperly socialized. Really! They both believe in dinosaurs and are sweet on the idea of descending from monkeys. Honored, actually. Mrs. G. used to write about them regularly but now (a second year grad student in Boston and a senior in high school) they are over being featured on their mom's "middle-aged woman blog" and Mrs. G. is on her own for material. It’s not as easy as it looks.

Mrs. G. was late to the internet. She invented it at the age of 40 when her husband gave her a laptop for her birthday. She started blogging a few weeks later and that was that.

Mrs. G. retired from blogging three times. Once to create the now shuttered Women’s Colony, an online magazine for women. Once because some internet loons called her house late one night spouting Biblical quotes and made fun of her hair. And once because she suffered one of her periodic crises of confidence. After coming out of her last retirement of six whole weeks, she swore to readers she would never write another “Dear Jane” letter again. She never will. They are stuck with her.

Why can’t she stay away from writing about her life for any length of time? Her pen pal David Sedaris explains it best: The drama bug strikes hardest with Jews, homosexuals and plump women who wear their hair in bangs. These are people who, for one reason or another, desperately crave attention.

Mrs. G. taught creative writing and literature from 2002 to 2009 at an alternative school in the  Washington Public School District.

She was a regular commentator on WUNC public radio from 1997 to 2000.

She wrote and narrated two radio documentaries for NPR's Soundprint, one of which won the 2001 Gracie Allen Award, presented by the Foundation of American Women in Television and Radio.

Her work has also appeared in Welcome Home, Hip Mama and Carolina Parent and she co-authored the handbook Release the Butterfly.

She dedicates all her past and present work to Johnny Depp.