An author originally from Annaheim is making her way back to where it all began Monday night.

Kathleen Grissom will be doing a public reading at the Reid-Thompson library here in Humboldt.

Grissom talks about how she believes it all began.

"In terms of my writing, how it all started was I had this wonderful Principal, Simon Lizee, in Annaheim School who really encouraged me with my writing. He was a poet, a published poet himself, and he since passed away, but through the years I would send back some of my work to him, some of my short stories, and he was very encouraging. He really gave me my good start with writing."

Grissom wrote "the Kitchen House" and "Glory Over Everything," and has received nominations for both the Goodreads Choice best debut author and Goodreads Choice best historical fiction, as well as a New York Times bestseller for "the Kitchen House."

She explains how her book got so big.

"When I discovered that the publishing house was only going to be giving me a certain amount of publicity, I realized that I was going to have to do some of it for myself. What I did was I reached out to book clubs and to book bloggers, it was quite new at the time, the blogging was quite new, and asked them if they were interested in reading my book and giving an honest report of what they thought of it."

Grissom gives some details about her reading on Monday night.

"On Monday, I'll be coming out to Humboldt to the Library. I'll be speaking there at 7 o'clock. I'm just happy to be back in my hometown, which is Humboldt, or very close to my hometown. So I hope I'll see some friends, and I'm sure I'll see lots of relatives."

Grissom now resides in Virginia.

You can hear more from Kathleen Grissom as she spoke with Bolt FM's Clark Stork here: