PSNH Presents on 9/6: Jennifer Freed on Writing Through Family Crisis
Date/Time
Date(s) - September 6, 2022
7:00 pm - 8:30 pm
Categories
When caught in a swirl of family needs and sorrows, writing may be the thing that holds you steady. But how do you write about people you love – how to balance anger and empathy, frustration and moments of grace? How do you decide whether to share what you’ve written, or to keep it private? These and other questions (point of view, narrative arc) will be on open for discussion when Jennifer L Freed reads poems from her recent collection When Light Shifts, which explores the aftermath of her mother’s cerebral hemorrhage, touching on themes of identity and ability, healing and loss, and the altered relationships that emerge in a family crisis. The cover art for the book was made by her pre-stroke mother.
To participate contact events@psnh.org
Bio for Jennifer Freed: Writer and teacher Jennifer Freed is the author of When Light Shifts: A Memoir-in-Poems, a 2022 finalist for the Sheila Margaret Motton Book prize, and of the chapbook These Hands Still Holding, a finalist for the 2013 New Women’s Voices Chapbook competition. She lives in Massachusetts where she teaches adult writing programs and where she raised two college-age daughters. In what feels like another life, she taught English to college students in China about a year before the demonstrations in Tiananmen Square, and to professionals in the Czech Republic about a year after the fall of the Berlin wall, before returning to the Boston area to work in ESL and curriculum development.