Faith A. Colburn

Biography

Faith Colburn is a sixth-generation Nebraskan with a master’s degree in creative writing from the University of Nebraska at Kearney. She holds a bachelor’s degree in journalism and political science and a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Her book, THRESHOLD: A MEMOIR, took the outstanding thesis in the College of Fine Arts and Humanities award at UNK for 2012 and she received UNK’s Outstanding Work in Fiction Award during its 2009 student conference and several awards from the Nebraska Federation of Press Women.
Her short fiction has appeared in Kinesis magazine and The Platte Valley Review and her poetry has been published in The Reynolds Review. As a public information officer for the Nebraska Game and Parks Commission, she wrote numerous articles for NEBRASKAland magazine, including copy for photo essays and historical articles. She also gained intimate knowledge of the landscape that often appears as a character/catalyst in her work.
Ms. Colburn has spent several years gathering oral family histories and biographies, including a 100-year memoir of the Lincoln newspaper publishing family, with an emphasis on their use of production technology. During a stint with the University of Nebraska’s Research and Extension Center as a communication specialist, she focused some of her research efforts on the history of a farm family in western Nebraska that amassed 10,000 acres of land over several generations in drought-prone high plains region. As a communications specialist for a Lutheran social ministry organization, she spent five years telling the stories of people with developmental disabilities. Those efforts helped her learn about the glue that holds families and communities together and the wedges that drive them apart. She has drafted a fiction collection that mirrors the true experiences of people she’s known.

Where to find Faith A. Colburn online

Series

Singers, Soldiers, and Saboteurs
In The Reluctant Canary Sings, Bobbi Bowen starts singing in nightclubs when she's 15 in 1937 because her parents can't make living, but the security she seeks eludes her at every turn. In See Willy See, Connor William Conroy, better known as C. Willy C. plans to take horticulture in college, but the year he graduates from high school, all three of the banks where his father has money close. He leaves the farm and becomes a hobo. When he returns, he encourages his sister to follow her dreams and the next thing he knows she's in Paris working at the U.S. Embassy and being bombed by the Nazis. Finally, as the war is ending, Bobbi and Connor meet in Colorado Springs. They've survived the Great Depression and World War II, but can they survive the peace? Anything they manage to save of the lives they'd planned will be Gravy.
See Willy See
Price: $5.99 USD.
Gravy
Price: $0.99 USD.

Books

Gravy
Series: Singers, Soldiers, and Saboteurs. Price: $0.99 USD. Words: 107,480. Language: English. Published: January 15, 2022 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » USA, Fiction » Romance » Historical » 20th Century
(5.00 from 1 review)
They survived the Great Depression and World War II, but will they survive the peace? He's an Army veteran with combat fatigue and she's a nightclub singer with her own scars. Can they make it together?
See Willy See
Series: Singers, Soldiers, and Saboteurs. Price: $5.99 USD. Words: 84,190. Language: English. Published: November 8, 2019 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » USA, Fiction » Literature » Literary
Winner of the 2020 Nebraska Book Award for Fiction: Caught in the run-up to World War II, Connor considers enlisting. He expects to go to Europe where he hopes to protect his sister, Nora, who's in Paris with the Foreign Service. Although he's terrified for his sister. it's hard to think about leaving home and family for another exile after bumming around the country during the Depression.
The Reluctant Canary Sings
Series: Singers, Soldiers, and Saboteurs. Price: $5.99 USD. Words: 81,650. Language: English. Published: June 29, 2018 . Categories: Fiction » Historical » USA, Fiction » Women's fiction » General
The only way she could save her family in catastrophic times was to sing.
Prairie Landscapes
Price: $2.99 USD. Words: 72,290. Language: English. Published: June 11, 2015 . Categories: Essay » Literature
(5.00 from 1 review)
A mash-up of Ted Kooser's Local Wonders, Roger Welch's Shingling the Fog and my own lifetime as an environmental journalist. Prairie Landscapes represents the ramblings of one mind prowling the Great Plains. With its focus on families and landed communities, it brings you face to face with the prairie and its creatures, including the two-legged ones.
From Picas to Bytes: Four Generations of Seacrest Newspaper Service to Nebraska
Price: $1.79 USD. Words: 55,010. Language: English. Published: September 7, 2014 . Categories: Nonfiction » Biography » Historical biography, Nonfiction » History » Modern / 20th Century
How one newspaper family made their city and their state a better place to live.
Threshold: A Memoir
Price: $5.99 USD. Words: 92,050. Language: English. Published: July 4, 2013 . Categories: Nonfiction » Biography » Personal memoir, Nonfiction » History » Family history
Award-winning series of creative essays about how a family survives, generation after generation, across race, through time, despite distance. How do communities sustain themselves in the face of enormous change? THRESHOLD provides a pattern gleaned from one American family's struggle to thrive, against the odds.