Marianne Fons
Quilter/Author
Workshops: 1. Read My Latest Quilt! 2. A Novelist’s Backpack.
Marianne Fons is known to millions of quilters as the former co-host of “Fons & Porter’s Love of Quilting” nationwide on Public TV. She coauthored “Quilter’s Complete Guide,” one of the most popular quilting books of all time with over 500,000 copies sold, and taught and lectured about quilts coast to coast for twenty years.
In her small town of Winterset, IA (pop. 5,375), she spearheaded the establishment of the Iowa Quilt Museum in 2016 and the renovation of the Iowa Theater in 2017. In 2022, she was named Madison County Citizen of the Year. Her Substack column, “Reporting from Quiltropolis,” offers slice-of-small-town-life snapshots of quilty goings-on in Winterset and beyond.
Her debut novel, “The Dressmaker of Winterset,” will be published in 2027 by Union Square & Company, a Hachette imprint.
Marianne is a member of the Iowa Writers Collaborative. Subscribe to her Substack column here: https://mariannefons.substack.com/
Workshops
“Read My Latest Quilt!” From the nineteenth forward, a few (but not many) American quiltmakers put their names on their quilts. A few did more than that, embedding sorrows, sentiments, and messages in their patchwork. In this entertaining presentation, Marianne Fons takes you on a visual journey from the 1800s to the present, with quilts doing much of the talking. And by the way, it turns out making a quilt is more like writing a novel than one might think.
“A Novelist’s Backpack.” The years-long journey generally required to produce a 90,000-word, publication-worthy manuscript is a daunting one. The tools and supplies the writer takes along can make a difference. In this workshop, debut author of “The Dressmaker of Winterset” provides an annotated packing list.