Chatterbox: Stories from a Noisy Life
Pre-order on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million and more.
Available everywhere 3/18/2025
Chatterbox: Stories from a Noisy Life is publishing in print and eBook formats March 2025 from Susan Schadt Press (https://www.susanschadtpress.com) and will be available through independent booksellers and online at www.amazon.com, www.barnesandnoble.com, https://www.booksamillion.com, https://www.powells.com and #shopindiebookstores (Instagram). For more information about Chatterbox or scheduling Barbara for an event, please contact barbara@barbaraworton.com.
And here’s what Chatterbox is all about:
“You talk too much…”
Remember that tune by Joe Jones from the 1960s? When I was a kid, my uncles sang it at me every time they drove out from Brooklyn to visit my family on Long Island. They had good cause. I’d be on them once they were five feet in the house, talking about something I thought was so important they had to hear about it that instant. Sometimes they’d listen. Most of the time they didn’t. No worries. I’d follow them into the dining room and talk, in between the grown-ups griping about the price of everything and fighting over politics, while we ate pasta and sauce and meatballs and sausages and bread and cheese and nuts and pastries. I’d finally zip it when my mother shot me an “I’m going to crucify you” look and let them drink their coffee and smoke their Marlboros in peace. They’d call me a chatterbox. I was. I am.
I also was and am a keen observer, watching, cataloging, and analyzing everything I see and feel. So here are some stories from chatterbox—me—about my distant and not so distant past, about my feelings, experiences, observations, and suspicions of the larger culture outside of my front door. Think of this book as a capsule of what it means to be a witness to life and to being human—no matter where you’re from or your age.
If you and I have never met, I hope you will see glimpses of yourself in my stories—have some wow-I-remember-that and that-sounds-like-me moments. Our experiences and histories may be different, but the thoughts and feelings personal stories may conjure can jump over walls and booby traps. If you knew or know me from any point in my history, you might remember the events in my stories differently. That’s fine. Memory is subjective, and these are my stories about the way I remember things. Thank you for reading Chatterbox: Stories from a Noisy Life. I’m so happy you took the time to listen.
Some Love for Chatterbox
“The stories, vignettes, poems, and musings in Barbara Worton’s delightful, far-ranging collection are the outpouring of a writer who has been ‘watching, cataloging and analyzing’ her whole life… Throughout, Worton employs a keen power of observation, ready sense of humor, and formidable memory to infuse the work with the cultural stuff of the day… listen to a skilled storyteller have her say on handwriting, gardening, supermarket lines, John Travolta, Audrey Hepburn, the Tappan Zee Bridge… You’ll wish this chatterbox would never shut up.” Paul Genega, author of Outtakes: New and Selected Poems 1975-2023
“Everybody has something to say in Barbara Worton’s Chatterbox… Her family is our family, con voce or silently loud. It is personal as it is universal. Her essays are small touch points that trigger definitions for ourselves. It is a read to remember.” Rochelle Udell, Creative Director
“Barbara Worton’s Chatterbox is a flash non-fiction trip down a long-lost memory lane, and a punch in the gut shot of reality. It shines a klieg light on our common history, our shared insecurities, our universal regrets, our well-earned rage and the humor that it takes to survive it all. Read it immediately.” Linda Dini Jenkins, author of Becoming Italian: Chapter and Verse from an Italian American Girl and Up at The Villa: Travels with My Husband
“Barbara Worton’s collection of stories is as satisfying and rich as her grandmother’s Sunday Sauce. Her prose is bubbling over with sensitivity, wit, and humor. It will satiate you. Expect to leave her world feeling more connected to our own.” Joyce Markovics, children’s book author
“Chatterbox is tender and tough, smooth and coarse, quiet and loud. Here, in this exquisite collection, with a pen that is both delicate and fierce, Barbara Worton illustrates life’s beautiful contrasts: sharp and funny observations from both the past and the present. As if I wasn’t seduced enough by Worton’s stories of ‘good girl cursive’ and ‘Buster Brown lace ups’ and walking past John Lennon on a Manhattan street, along comes St. Christopher and that sealed the deal! Chatterbox honors the curious specificity that memory affords us. Yet, alongside the humor and charm, live some critical questions about Worton’s internal life as well as life outside her sometimes-changing body, mind, and community. Space, breath, and mystery are offered to the reader, within and in-between these revelatory micro-memoirs. This is work that ignites memory and the senses, never shying away from the heavy while finding a way to celebrate the light. This is a volume of recollections and musings that invite the heart and head to wonder, remember, and hope.” Kathy Curto, author of Not for Nothing: Glimpses into a Jersey Girlhood
“As a filmmaker, I know the power of personal stories to connect people across all sorts of experiences, differences, and backgrounds. Barbara’s stories have that power. They get in your head and get you thinking about your own life and what it means to be human.” Anthony Amatullo, director/producer of Surviving On LES, Peabody Award Winner of Having Our Say
“Chatterbox is a deeply moving memoir with its share of humor and vividly colorful figures—a book I couldn’t put down and will return to again and again.” Paul Rabinowitz, Founder of ARTS By The People, author of truth, love and the lines in between and Grand Street, Revisited
“Barbara Worton’s collection of interconnected narratives, Chatterbox: Stories from a Noisy Life, tell the tale of a formative time in the author’s life, written with humor, keen observations, and love. ‘… walls were quilted together from wood salvaged from a patchwork of boards from vegetable and fruit crates still bearing the Andy Boy and California Oranges stickers.’ Worton places readers in her childhood site looking back and forward to stories of trust, relationships, and promises in her milieu: from her grandmother’s home to the neighborhood.” Maria Lisella, author of Thieves in the Family
I felt like I climbed into the rumble seat alongside Barbara, for a breezy spin, outside-looking-in, at a passing lifescape of experiences, colorful to soulful; getting to see and feel a fine slice of a once-upon-a-time world through her wide eyes and vibrating inner senses. Just my kind of joyride; right to the last word. I loved how I felt like I was listening to each story as I read it, and could vividly picture each scene, and character, and imagine the voices and tones, and personalities at play inside each story, each well-shaped, remembered and a lovingly-preserved touchstone.” Colin Goedecke, Poetorialist & Guiding Spirit of The Poetisphere
“Barbara grew up thinking that ‘I have to be me. But why do I make so many mistakes?’ The good part here is that the stories are compelling, amusing, and what were once mistakes were, in fact, part of growing up. Barbara became a terrific writer, unafraid to get out of her comfort zone, and succeeded on her own terms. Even though I am a bit older and Jewish, not Italian, I recognize the feelings and experiences of a mid-century woman wanting to be her own person, to be someone. Her. Own. Someone.” Barbara Lawrence, not-for-profit expert
