Casey Lane

Writer and Editor

When my daughter was born the magnitude of what I’d undertaken was felt as soon as I tried juggling both a Zoom call and her (supposed) nap. As I apologized for the baby cries, gently bouncing her in the infant-wrap that required both a YouTube tutorial and full-length mirror, we entered our fourth week of lockdown and into the water I went, tossed and tangled in the weight of the wave, my mom-bun bobbing like a struggling buoy. I was 30lbs overweight and suddenly crying, depressed, or laughing––and all in a span of 20 minutes. When my daughter turned two, the tantrums mounted, rolling in like storm-system-swells and I knew that without air, without some form of release, I would drown in the white-water of her tears, and mine.

At some point, although the memory of how fades into a fog of sleep deprivation and powdered formula, I earned my MFA in Non-Fiction from Bay Path University, a small college in Connecticut, never having stepped foot on campus. Instead, I skipped over the East Coast and joined my professors (and fellow indoor-cats) on a 10-day writer’s workshop in Dingle, Ireland where I earned my first piece of real, thin-thickening feedback. “Tell the real story,” was the quip with which my 1,800 words were passed back to me, almost papercutting the nose of another writer as it was sent eyes-down, arm outstretched in my direction, while the rest of the room sat nervously awaiting their summation, all of us hoping to sound prophetic from granny-couches draped in mis-matched florals––wallpaper and drapes to match. Fortunately, the week drowned me in tea, fresh fish, and Atlantic sea-spray and I floated to shore some years later too tired and weak from motherhood (now two kids deep) to consider any other version of life than the, often crude and frequently profane––truth.

In 2025, after writing and editing freelance for several years, I launched my own publication, GOLDFOLK Magazine, which tells the stories of my neighbors and community members in the Sierra Foothills. The magazine has produced 8 issues in 18 months and now delivers full-color and expertly written issues to more than 20,000 homes with a spotlight on the lives of local entrepreneurs using narrative-driven marketing.