Too Opinionated Interview: Jennifer Silva-Redman

In this deeply meditative, quietly funny memoir, Jennifer Silva Redmond and her husband Russel embark on a year-long sailing trip for their honeymoon. Over thirty years later, they’re still going.

When Jennifer Silva married Russel Redmond, they decided to spend a year at sea, sailing in Mexico. The honeymoon tested their new relationship, not just through rocky waters and unexpected weather, but in the ways that living on a twenty-six-foot sailboat makes one reconsider what’s truly important. In this charming, meditative memoir, Jennifer recounts that first fateful year they spent at sea, moving back and forth through the waves of her life.   On their first voyage, the couple sailed Watchfire to Baja’s Sea of Cortez, where they spent a year before sailing south along Mexico and Central America and through the Panama Canal. Jennifer’s unique experience on the boat weaves back and forth through time as she explores the events that led her to taking the first step onto the boat—from her childhood to the time she spent as a struggling actor in New York.

Jennifer Silva Redmond is a writer and freelance editor from California. Her essays, articles, and fiction have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines, and on sites such as Brevity. She is on the staff of the Southern California Writers Conference and San Diego Writers, Ink, and was the prose editor for A Year in Ink, vol 3, and co-founder of the critically acclaimed Sea of Cortez Review. She lives with her husband Russel, an artist and teacher, aboard their current sailboat Watchfire, somewhere on the West Coast of North America. Formerly editor-in-chief of Sunbelt Publications, Jennifer is now their editor-at-large. She is currently writing a book about editing; her book reviews and blog posts about writing, editing, and sailing life can be found on her website.