About

Ashleen O’Gaea

A native Oregonian, O’Gaea’s back after fifty years in Arizona, living in a “Craftsman-adjacent” home called Casa Sequoia, about twelve miles from where she was born. She delights in winter rains, applauds crocuses and daffodils, and revels in the protection of the eponymous Gian Sequoia in her back yard. (Proud of her Highland Scots heritage, she was also delighted to find heather among the plantings that were here when she and her husband bought their Gresham home.)

She’s been a writer as long as she can remember. She crafted stories in school, wrote for her college newspaper, and worked as a stringer on a weekly paper so defunct she can’t find it referenced online. She was a columnist and occasional contributor to various Wiccan and Pagan newsletters and magazines, and she’s provided introductions and prefaces to other authors’ work.

Her books about including children in the practice of Wicca were ground-breaking, and she continues to write about Pagan experience in many of her novels. She’s happy to be a member of Willamette Writers, one of its side groups (The Wri Place), and the Tucson-based Pen and Ink Club. Every November she participates in National Novel Writing Month, which has encouraged most of her non-fiction.

Like some of her characters, she enjoys camping; like others, she’s a Wiccan priestess (herself now retired, but with an altar in her office). She writes in genres ranging from magical realism to epic fantasy, from mystery to romance, and her published work includes non-fiction as well as novels, poetry, and music. She aims for authenticity in her writing, and she doesn’t shy from Serious Issues.

When she’s not writing, she enjoys camping, walking the Westies (aptly named Dram and Islay), watching TV, and reimagining her front and back gardens … and she takes her whisky neat.