Ann Hood

Happiness is an empty stretch of Rhode Island sand.

History, culture, hip shopping, and food for all tastes add up to one of the best holiday weekend getaways around in Providence, Rhode Island.

As novelist Ann Hood reveals in her essay, we may outgrow where we grew up, but we can never really leave it behind.

Mama Rose could neither read nor write, but her life was filled with as much tragedy and drama as the afternoon soap operas she adored.

For one young woman dreaming of her future, New England’s iconic Jordan Marsh department stores offered a taste of elegance and sophistication.

At home in Providence with Chris Van Allsburg, the author of The Polar Express, one of the most beloved holiday tales of all time.

I grew up in cemeteries. One Sunday afternoon a month, after Mass, after the midday meal of lasagna or spaghetti and meatballs, my grandmother visited the dead. Mama Rose never learned to drive, so her cousin–Uncle Rum–took her from graveyard to graveyard in his square green Ford. I didn’t have a choice; when Mama Rose […]

In an effort to persuade me to move back to Rhode Island, my future husband, Lorne, took me to a towering pile of mud in downtown Providence. “Someday,” he announced with a sweep of his arm, “this will be a beautiful river, with footbridges and music and crowds of people.” My reaction? I cried. For […]

One summer, I stood on a platform in the Junior Miss department of Jordan Marsh at Rhode Island’s Warwick Mall and watched my favorite stockboy wheel overloaded racks of men’s suits and women’s coats through the aisles. It was 1973, and I was a Marsha Jordan Girl, one of eight high school kids who modeled […]