About Quilt Fiction & the Story Guild

Quiltfiction.com is the place for quilters who love to read, and especially love quilt stories. Whether you’re in the mood for a short story or making a list for your next library trip, you’ll find everything you need right here: original fiction, book lists and interviews with your favorite authors. Stay current by signing up for the QuiltFiction newsletter!

Quiltfiction.com was founded in 2018 by author Frances O’Roark Dowell, who, in a moment of questionable judgment, decided to podcast her work-in-progress, the quilting novel Friendship Album, 1933. 525 pages later, she found herself in the middle of a community of quilters and readers who had followed the adventures of Eula, Bess, Florence, Dorothy and Emmeline. They met regularly in the Quilt Fiction Club, a private group that’s still going strong (sign up here) to talk about books, quilts and, of course, pie.

For the next several years, Frances continued to publish stories about the Friendship Album quilters on the Quilt Fiction podcast. In 2020, she read weekly chapters of Aunt Jane of Kentucky, Eliza Calvert Hall’s classic novel about a small town quilter in the late 19th century.

At the end of 2022, Frances launched a new Quilt Fiction community, the Quilt Fiction Story Guild. Eager to return to Milton Falls and the lives of the Wednesday Morning Bee quilters, Frances hoped she could find support from listeners to help her continue work on the Friendship Album project. A week after the site was launched, the number of subscribers far exceeded expectations, and more are joining every week.

Currently, Friendship Album, 1933, Aunt Jane of Kentucky, the Milton Falls short stories, and the work-in-progress Friendship Album: Forget Me Not, are available to Story Guild subscribers only. We’ll let people know when they’re available via our Etsy shop.

Beginning in 2023, new episodes of the Quilt Fiction podcast will appear monthly. Episodes can be accessed on the Quilt Fiction website as well as via iTunes, YouTube and other podcast outlets. Join Frances as she talks about her favorite quilt fiction, reads stories (her own and by author authors as well) and occasionally chats with other quilt fiction authors.

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More about Frances

While many of her listeners know Frances as a novelist who writes about quilts and quiltmakers, she’s known outside of the quilt world for her “beloved books for tweens and teenagers” (New York Times Sunday Book Review). Since 2010 she has hosted a popular podcast about her life as a quilter, “The Off-Kilter Quilt,” and in 2016 she established a small publishing company to bring out a line of stories and novels especially for quiltmakers and quilt lovers. The quilting novel Birds in the Air was followed by the short story collection Margaret Goes Modern in 2017. Stars Upon Stars — a sequel to Birds in the Air — is in the works! (You can learn more about Frances at her author website: FrancesDowell.com)