Not long ago, a middle-aged woman, Kelly Ferguson, left Missoula, Montana, with a crazy-sounding mission: wear a prairie dress, an apron and a bonnet, and travel around the mid-West visiting the historic homes of Laura Ingalls Wilder. During this program, she'll tell you why and read from the book she wrote about her experiences, My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself.

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Kelly Kathleen Ferguson needed to know - was connecting with her lifelong heroine the key to knowing herself? She decided to find out. She donned a prairie dress and retraced the pioneer journey of Laura Ingalls Wilder. From Wisconsin to Minnesota, South Dakota to Missouri, she explored Laura’s past and her own. Part travelogue, part memoir and part social commentary, My Life as Laura shows how a relationship with a pioneer girl who lived in little houses long ago can give a sense of purpose for today.

Kelly Ferguson’s work has appeared in mental_floss magazine, Poets & Writers, Gettysburg Review (for which she received a Pushcart nomination), McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and Brevity, among other publications. She has an MFA from the University of Montana, and is currently working on a PhD in creative nonfiction at Ohio University. Kelly is Libra, Cancer rising, moon in Aquarius. She is Irish/French/German, lapsed Roman Catholic, and right-brained. Kelly once received a minority scholarship for a machinist certification program at Durham Technical Community College. When Kelly was four, she ate a mothball and had to have her stomach pumped, or she would have died.

Visit Kelly Ferguson's Web site.

You'll find My Life as Laura: How I Searched for Laura Ingalls Wilder and Found Myself at Fact & Fiction in downtown Missoula, on the UM campus at the Montana Museum of Art & Culture or the UC Bookstore, or at your local independent bookseller.

The Write Question is produced by Chérie Newman.

Read an interview with TWQ producer Chérie Newman on the Humanities Montana Web site.

Executive producer, Michael Marsolek.

Special thanks to Lisa Simon, David Moore, Barbara Theroux, and Kim Anderson.

This program is supported in part by Humanities Montana, connecting kids to community, supporting vital cultural institutions, and encouraging community conversations. And by Montana's Cultural Trust, Fact & Fiction book stores, and Public Radio Listeners.

The Write Question: a program that explores the world of writing and publishing in the western United States.

The music in this program was written and performed by John Floridis.

Send comments to Chérie Newman.

Guests on the The Write Question are writers, publishers, and illustrators living, or working for an extended period of time, in the western United States. The Write Question is a production of Montana Public Radio.