Tag: Leanna James Blackwell

an odyssey through politically-fraught family moments: book event in western massachusetts

Reuniting with deeply-admired colleagues is always a joy. Reuniting with colleagues who leave you feeling like a rock star is utterly fabulous.

Such was my feeling after Suzanne Strempek Shea — my former newspaper colleague, writing mentor and fellow MFA creative nonfiction writing instructor — interviewed me for a book talk about my novel, Louie on the Rocks, at the Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley. Suzanne has an uncanny ability of asking incisive questions that frequently give me pause and make me wonder why I’ve never thought of that particular angle before.

Our back-and-forth, as well as the questions from attendees, focused a great deal on the subjects of my vacillating between different writing genres, and how I rendered on the page an authentic depiction of people who hold different political beliefs than I hold. That’s a question I’m getting a lot. It’s no secret that I’m adamantly opposed to all things MAGA and what’s happening under the Trump administration, but when I was developing the character of Louie Francis, I placed my personal politics inside a box and shoved aside. My charge was to create a fully-developed character and figure out how he thought. Additionally, I wanted to illustrate that, in spite of our currently polarized climate, Louie wasn’t and shouldn’t be perceived as just one thing, as just a MAGA dude. He was a good and supportive husband, a loving son-in-law, a reliable employee, and a respected volunteer in his community. Writing Louie required me to think more fulsomely about the layers and texture of his life, not simply through the lens of his politics.

Afterward during the book signing portion, I had the chance to chat with folks and was thrilled to see my very first friend in my hometown of West Springfield there in attendance — Gina! — as well as two pals from my UMass-Amherst days. And the support from the Bay Path University MFA in Creative Nonfiction community, wow, it made me feel blessed. In addition to Suzanne, there was her husband Tommy Shea (who mentored me when I was a young newspaper reporter), former MFA director Leanna James Blackwell, and Anne Pinkerton, with whom I had classes when I earned my own MFA from Bay Path.

teaching narrative nonfiction with bay path university’s mfa program

A beloved colleague of mine from my western Massachusetts newspaper reporting days — Suzanne Strempek Shea, with whom I used to work at the Springfield, Mass. newspaper — designed a wonderful Narrative Medicine area of study for Bay Path University’s Master of Fine Arts in Creative Nonfiction program.

It’s a new track in the MFA program (I earned my MFA in creative nonfiction there in 2017) and is also offered as a stand-alone certificate program. Last June, I participated in a Bay Path MFA webinar to discuss my 2020 medical memoir, Uncomfortably Numb, where Suzanne and I talked virtually about the book as well as narrative medicine.

Fast-forward to early February 2021: I was contacted by MFA Program Director Leanna James Blackwell and asked if I could take over the already-in-progress Intro to Narrative Medicine class because Suzanne had to take a temporary leave due to an injury. (This is such a weird confluence of events, an injury preventing her from teaching narrative medicine.) Luckily, I was already familiar with the Canvas learning management system which they utilize — also used by Northeastern University where I teach journalism classes — and had already read one of the main texts.

Now as I plan to have my second evening Zoom class with a group of seven writers, I finally feel as though I’ve got a handle on the class and its rhythm, and cannot wait for the rest of the semester to unfold as we devour Writing Hard Stories by Melanie Brooks, Bodies of Truth edited by Dinty W. Moore, Erin Murphy, et al., and engage with the students’ creative nonfiction work about issues of illness and trauma.

Meanwhile, we’re sending healing vibes to Suzanne!