About Searching for Home

Hello Substack readers and writers!

I’m Janet Hulstrand, an American writer/editor and writing coach living in a little village in the Champagne region, southeast of Paris—between Troyes and Dijon.

I write nonfiction books that have their source in my own life experiences. So far I have coauthored a book on downsizing the family home, and written two other books: Demystifying the French: How to Love Them, and Make Them Love You, and A Long Way from Iowa: From the Heartland to the Heart of France.

I have a Wordpress blog, Writing from the Heart, Reading for the Road; and I write occasionally on the blog my coauthor and I publish, Downsizing the Home: Lessons Learned.

I also teach online classes for Politics and Prose bookstore in Washington DC, mostly classes that involve reading and discussing books about life in France, past and present, but not always.

I am a proud (and grateful) Minnesotan; a proud (and grateful) once-and-forever (though now exiled) Brooklynite; and a happily resettled American in France.

I spend a lot of time in Paris when I am not living my very quiet country life in Champagne, walking, writing, reading, and writing about books, mostly books written by Americans about France; and mostly for BonjourParis.com and France Today.

My Substack posts are currently focused on the concept of Searching for Home, a topic that is uppermost in mind at this time in my life, as I reflect on the places where I have felt most at home.

I am working toward my next memoir, the exact shape of which remains to be seen. But it will have something to do with telling more of my story. And I will be using Substack as a place to work toward that next book, slowly but surely.

If you are already subscribed, thank you for your interest in my work! And if you are merely following me, or just curious about what I am doing here, thank you for that too.

Stay tuned for more. It’s coming slowly, but it’s coming!