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.