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 rode bike 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 degree in mass communications and to enter the world of newspaper reporting. Audrey’s first job out of college was a two-year stint at The Gaylord Hub, where she was fondly called “the cub from The Hub.”
Eventually, Audrey went on to work for several 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 for 24 years.
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 thankful that today she can compose her stories on a desktop computer rather than pounding out words on an old manual typewriter.
When she isn’t writing, Audrey enjoys reading. She has achieved a childhood dream of living near a library, which is just blocks from her house. Audrey’s hometown still doesn’t have a library, although a bookmobile stops regularly on the main street. Audrey especially delights in writing book reviews for Minnesota Moments because it melds her two passions—reading and writing. She’s been heard to say, “It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.”
Audrey also enjoys baking, gardening and going to garage sales. Or at least now she can enjoy those hobbies again after getting a new right hip in June 2008. Audrey is always on the hunt for vintage tablecloths to add to her collection. She also likes old dressers, old mirrors, old drinking glasses, old prints and paintings, and old bowls. Actually, she sometimes thinks she was born in the wrong time period.