About Beverly
Bio
I was born on a December day in Western Baptist Hospital in Paducah, Kentucky. I didn’t enter the world alone. My brother Brian preceded me by just five minutes. It so happened that we were the first twins born in that hospital, and I have the newspaper clippings to prove it. My mother looks happy there in the hospital bed, holding one of us in each arm. When I asked her a couple of years ago how that could be—she had five other children at home—she said she was happy. She’d never had twins before.
So, there you go. Big family, lots of fun, some trouble, some bad times, lots of love, like all other families. We moved from Kentucky back to Alabama, and then to Ohio when I was nine, because my mother, who worked for the Air Force, got a promotion and a new job up north. After high school, I went back to Alabama to go to college, but after a year and a half I got sidetracked by the chance to join a traveling music group and hit the road. After three years and hundreds of concerts in churches and schools, I got married and finished my degree in Nashville at Belmont College (now Belmont University) majoring in math and minoring in music business. I started working as a studio singer, and then as a vocal contractor for record producers.
That led to songwriting and getting some record cuts. Eventually songwriting led to producing a demo or two, and then to a great job producing touring shows: Amy Grant’s pop tour, then her big tour with the Nashville Symphony Orchestra. We took 100 musicians and crew on buses, trucks and planes all over the country, for all of several Decembers, playing arenas coast to coast and having a ball. One year I had the luck to put together Michael W. Smith’s Christmas tour, one of my favorite creative experiences.
Along the way, I wrote several musical dramas for print music companies who market mostly to churches, and I owned a company for a while that created audio product (songs and stories) for little kids. And I kept writing songs. My music business education had convinced me that I should own my own music company to publish my songs when that was possible. I started Annie Merle Music, and learned every little thing about licensing and royalties from the ground up, because I did it myself.
I still write songs and I have had some wonderful luck in that area. I have written with amazingly talented writers, like Amy and Michael, Keith Thomas, Tommy Sims, and most recently with Vince Gill. Eric Clapton recorded a song Vince and I wrote and later Vince released two of our songs on his own project. The iconic R & B group, the Drifters, did a cover of a song Michael Smith and I wrote, originally recorded by Michael. It just doesn’t get any better than that for a songwriter.
A few years ago I was hired to be the Executive Director of Chartwell Literary Group, a new firm that was created to manage literary projects, everything from research to editing, writing to contract review. It was in this role that I put together a proposal for the book, Laura's List, built around the First Lady's recommended reading list. It was met with enthusiasm by the first editor I sent it to at Penguin in New York, and before I knew it, I was hard at work at yet another brand new venture for me. It was released in May 2006, and I was given plenty of great opportunities to promote it and the idea behind it: "Use this reliable list from a trusted source to encourage your children to read. Then use the guides that I include in the book to start some interesting talks with your family. Reading is fun, inexpensive, and the best lifetime gift you can give a child."
I have several interests and enthusiasms.
Belmont University’s basketball teams have made me a loyal fan, and we have had season tickets for decades.
I like history and I love family, so those combined have me lost down the rabbit hole of genealogy for many hours.
I really enjoy live music, especially if there is a dance floor.
I love creating in any form, and nothing brings me more joy than cooking, painting, planting and decorating. I spend days at a time deeply engaged with my grandson as he invents complicated games and builds new worlds out of sticks, Legos, whatever is at hand. We are made in the image of the Creator, and all of these dedicated hours in the kitchen, garden and at my easel make me feel part of the Grand Plan.
A few years ago I married Stephen Mansfield, and we share a life full of great work and a fair amount of fun. We split our time between Nashville and Washington, D.C., enjoying our days as true city dwellers. I have a son, Isaac, who is a photographer and writer. Stephen has two children, Jonathan and Elizabeth, and our expanded family brings us great joy. The adventure continues!
Photos of my Favorite Places
My Interests and Enthusiasms
Travel and Other Fun
Q&A
What's Bev listening to these days?
I have Bruno Mars, The Romantic, on shuffle. I don’t think I’m going to get tired of that one. I'm especially crazy about old-school, top-notch songwriting, so I try to fill my head with the artistry of the greats: Paul Simon, Joni Mitchell, the Bergmans, Boudleaux Bryant, Mann-Weil, Ashford-Simpson, that kind of thing. The late great Eva Cassidy was such a wonderful interpreter of songs, as is Celine Dion. Celine’s albums in French are very moving.
I like to keep playlists for every kind of mood, and to get me dancing and happy, give me Whitney, Outkast, Stevie Wonder, Aretha, Train, Chaka Khan, Mingo Fishtrap, Dua Lipa and Tower of Power.
And the books you are reading?
The Frontiersman by Allan Eckert. If American history intrigues you, this is an amazing account of the settling of what was “the West,” the Ohio territory in the mid 1700’s. Gruesome, but enlightening.
I’m having a crazy reintroduction to the origins of Israel by reading Genesis and Exodus in the Bible. Reading these accounts slowly is an eye-opener, even if you’ve been hearing them all your life.
I do like good fiction. Just finished I Cheerfully Refuse by Leif Enger, one of my favorite novelists. No matter what odd story he tells, he is authentically full of hope and redemption. Loved it.
Almost always have a good mystery in the line up, so yes, anything by Rex Stout, Anthony Horowitz, Peter Lovesey is right up my alley.
To offset too much crime and sin, I turn back to D.E. Stevenson and Jan Karon, wise and funny, honest and human. These writers lift my spirit.