Audrey Kletscher Helbling

Writer Audrey Kletscher Helbling grew up in a Little House on the Prairie. Really. Her tiny childhood home outside of Vesta, didn’t have a bathroom or, for a long time, a telephone. On the family’s dairy farm, Audrey walked beans, picked rock, fed calves and cows, and scooped manure. When she wasn’t in the barn, Audrey played in the grove with her five siblings. Or she biked across the flat open land of spacious skies and stunning sunsets in southwestern Minnesota. Her writing career began at the Wabasso High School newspaper, The Rabbit Tracks. That led her to pursue a mass communications degree and a writing career. Fresh out of college, Audrey worked as a newspaper reporter and photographer for The Gaylord Hub, where she was fondly called “the cub from The Hub.” Eventually, Audrey joined the staffs of other weekly newspapers and a daily newspaper in Minnesota. She also established permanent residence in Faribault with her husband, Randy, where she has lived in the same house since 1984. After taking time off to raise her three children (she still has one to go; he’s a teen), Audrey returned to writing. Her work has since been published in poetry anthologies, devotionals, two books, magazines and in greeting cards. She is also passionate about blogging. When she isn’t writing, Audrey loves to read and has achieved a childhood dream of living near a library, only blocks from her house. Her hometown still doesn’t have a library, although a bookmobile stops regularly on the one-block main street. Audrey also enjoys photography (especially now that she owns a digital camera), baking, gardening and going to garage sales.