Virginia Zimmerman

Virginia Zimmerman grew up in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C., though she was named for a great aunt, not for her state. When she was young, she enjoyed writing and talking to friends about books, so she decided to grow up into a person who could do those things all the time. She was an English major at Carleton College, and she went to graduate school in English at the University of Virginia. All together, she enjoyed twenty years of formal education, much of it focused on reading.

When she finished school, she wasn’t done reading, writing and talking to friends about books, so she became an English professor at Bucknell University. This means—and she still pinches herself to make sure this is real—she gets to read and write and talk about books for a living. Most of the classes she teaches are about British literature from the nineteenth century or children’s fiction. She loves both.

Virginia also loves Catalunya, a beautiful region in the northeast corner of Spain. Her husband, Jordi, is part of a large and wonderful Catalan family, and, for twenty years, Virginia has been traveling with him to visit Barcelona and lots of picturesque villages in the mountains, the countryside and on the Mediterranean Sea. The family has become her own, and Catalunya has become her second home.

Virginia’s first home is a two-hundred-year-old house in a small town on the Susquehanna River in Pennsylvania, where she gets to read and write and talk about books with dear friends, inspiring students and beloved family. She lives with her husband, three children and little white dog.