Fran Ringold is retiring after 47 years as editor-in-chief of Nimrod, a prestigious literary magazine sponsored in part by the University of Tulsa. She has encouraged, discovered and nurtured countless writers and was at the center of a literary culture that has nearly vanished in America. We had a strong connection, the two of us, even though I felt distinctly out of place at a Literary Conference, Fran and I had breakfast together and I felt as if I had known her much of my life. She is thinking of starting a blog in her next phase of life, she is 79. I had no doubt she will get one up and it will be brilliant.

Despite her constant pestering me to meet her dog, I felt the strongest connection with her, and I cannot begin to say why this is so. She lost her mother when she was eight, was adopted by her Aunt Bea, a vaudeville star and she is an accomplished poet (twice the Oklahoma Poet Laureate.) I don’t know if I will ever see Fran again or talk to her, but I got the portrait of her that I wanted as she stood in the sunlight outside of the conference meeting rooms, she was exhausted and fighting off a migraine.