About
Who is M. Turville Heitz?
A former journalist, editor, water quality planner, grant manager, and farmer, M. Turville Heitz’s short fiction appeared in anthologies and magazines before she took a break to collect a PhD and teach science and technical communications to undergrads. She lives on a defunct farm near Madison, Wisconsin where she coddles chickens and is kept by cats. She can be found on social media at Bluesky 
Origins
Oakland Hills Farm began more than 30 years ago as Oakland Ink, a full-time freelance writing and editorial services business. Our goal then was to eventually buy a farm and raise organic produce, fish, poultry and sheep. Shortly before we intended to close on that dream farm, my husband David was killed in a head on car crash. Left with a two-year-old and the unpredictable earnings of Oakland Ink, I had to let the dream farm go. A couple of years later, that young son (I blame him for everything that came after) said, “Can we drive by the farm we were going to buy?” As we drove by he said, “Mom, get your purse! Look!” The farm across the road was for sale by owner. He was persuasive. Oakland Hills Farm was born.
Life interruptus
Life has a way of coming full circle. I had been writing fiction for years, with sporadic short-fiction sales but the novels were where my heart lay. Those characters had lives, they were my people — good, bad, heroic, nasty – I cared what happened to them. But farming is a lot of work. As was running an international publishing convention. And then there was the opportunity to go to grad school. And then there was the full-time teaching, while full-time farming, while full-time grad school (seriously, it was an “accidental” PhD), while full-time single-parenting and I think it’s pretty clear I had an issue with saying no to impulsive me. The writing languished. Then the farm started to go by the wayside as the free labor headed for college and it got just a little more frustrating to wrestle sheep onto trailers and address unpredictable produce and egg sales (I was undercut by the backyard chicken craze). The full-time work somehow took precedence and then there was a pandemic and then … and then … and then one day I received the kind of bad health news that makes us think about what we have accomplished in life and if we feel satisfied with that.
Unfinished business
I have unfinished business. And I have characters who I gave life to who only lived in my mind and my computer, sprung from my fingertips but not fully realized as long as they went no further. One day, I feared, my time would come and my son would wipe the hard drive of my computer and so end the lives of characters who had many times taken their own initiatives as they escaped my fingers onto the page.
My parents, my husband and my mother-in-law had always pushed me to take the time to write, to spend time with those characters I crafted, to play in those worlds I created. But all of those cheerleaders were gone now. I felt like I’d let them down. I steeled myself and opened a file. And became lost in a story I had written in another time, another place, as a person so very different from who I am today. As I revised and re-wrote, some of those characters benefited from the growth I’ve had, in learning about life-altering grief, parenting, higher education and a deeper connection with the land. I find it interesting that in all five of the novels I’ve completed thus far, I find my growth as a human reflected in their growth. I hope you fall for them as much as I have.
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July 2026 Newsletter (ignore the ghost “Feb” in the link)
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