Monica Duncan is a writer of literary fiction, musician, wife, and mother. Originally from Michigan, she finds herself continually drawn to the hidden richness of the places she comes from. Now living in Newburyport, Massachusetts, she is still at home, by the water.

Monica holds music degrees from Michigan State and Indiana University, and is active as a freelance musician and teacher in the Greater Boston area.

She’s pretty sure she’ll always be in love with the soundtrack from “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”, and has discovered that her favorite skill as a writer she learned from her life in music: Be a good listener.

When Juniper Kowalski, a mediocre artist and graduate of one of the best art schools in the country, gets pregnant by her married lover, she ends up back in Gobles, Michigan, living in her dead grandma’s trailer. She fears that her new life as a hotel maid, and as the best friend of a subrural call girl, has fulfilled some bleak fate. But Juniper’s pregnancy also ignites a will to create. Every hurt that she’s ever suffered begins to emerge as confrontational, public art.

Family lore has taught Juniper disdain for men. But it’s not hatred for her absent father, abusive grandpa, or even her baby daddy, causing her issues. It’s facing actual love from a big, flawed, breathtaking man. “Twine” celebrates a quietly radical view of small-town life, ambition, and motherhood. It is the story of a young woman who needs no hero, and what she does when he shows up anyway.