What’s Inspiring Me - Chopin In Kentucky

June 2026

What I’m reading

Chopin In Kentucky by Elizabeth Heichelbech

A published novel about a girl who was too big for the room she was born into. And the visibility question that lives inside every creative entrepreneur who has ever asked: what if someone actually sees me?

What has stayed with me is the gap between creating work that asks others to be seen and allowing yourself to be seen doing it.

Roanville, Kentucky. 1977. A girl named Marie Higginbottom wants to dance. The problem isn't talent. It isn't drive. It's that the world she was born into has no room for her hugeness.

That is the story at the center of Chopin in Kentucky, the debut novel by author, educator, and creativity coach Liz Heichelbech. Marie navigates poverty, a religiously rigid father, and the particular ache of being a creative soul in a place that doesn't know what to do with one. Guided by the ghost of Chopin — full of artistic and dietary opinions — and Misty, the world's first female Elvis impersonator, she finds her way toward the thing she was always meant to do.

It is funny and heartbreaking and completely disarming.

I’m haunted by what remains after reading it:

Visibility is the oldest creative problem there is.

Marie's story isn't just about a girl who wants to dance. It's about what it costs to be seen as exactly who you are in a world that hasn't asked for you yet. It's about the decision — made quietly, repeatedly, in small moments — to show up as your full self anyway.

That decision doesn't get easier just because you grow up. It doesn't get easier just because you build a business, write a book, or sit in a community of people who understand you.

I know this because I have watched brilliant, creative entrepreneurs do exactly what Marie does — find the costume that fits the room, soften the edges, stay just busy enough that no one gets a clear look. Not because they aren't ready. Because visibility asks something of us that certainty can never provide.

This book is the June read for Curated Conversation Evolution — and the timing is not accidental. We spent May inside uncertainty. We found something underneath it. June is where the costume comes off.

Chopin in Kentucky is the perfect companion for that.

Find it where you browse for books: Chopin in Kentucky

Learn more about Liz Heichelbech