Here's an event that writers, especially, may enjoy. But all book lovers, including book club members, might consider attending - this is sure to be an excellent session, as both featured writers have a lot of writing credits, and are active in teaching the writing life to others.
Straw Dog Writers Guild presents a Salon with local authors
Contact: Jacqueline Sheehan at jrsheehan@verizon.net
Sunday, June 26 at 3 p.m. in the Smith Conference Center, Smith College, Northampton
Local authors Suzanne Strempek Shea and Tom Shea, nationally known and recognized for their fiction and nonfiction works, will interview each other about writing while living under one roof. Interviews with the authors can be scheduled.
The Straw Dog Writers Guild announces a rare opportunity to hear a nationally recognized Western MA writing couple interview each other about their art and how they write while living under one roof. On Sunday, June 26th the Guild will host a fund-raising salon featuring Suzanne Strempek Shea and Tom Shea, who each draw from local life lived in western Massachusetts.
A suggested donation of $5 for seniors and students and $10 for general admission is requested. Proceeds provide support for this newly established writers¹ guild whose mission is to support writers and their organizations and provide access to the art and craft of writing in Western
Massachusetts.
Suzanne Strempek Shea, born and raised in western Massachusetts, won the 2000 New England Book Award, which recognizes a literary body of work's contribution to the region. She is the author of five novels: Selling the Light of Heaven, Hoopi Shoopi Donna, Lily of the Valley, Around Again, and Becoming Finola. She has also written three memoirs: Songs From a Lead-lined Room: Notes High and Low From My Journey Through Breast Cancer and Radiation; Shelf Life: Romance, Mystery, Drama and Other Page-Turning Adventures from a Year in a Bookstore; and Sundays in America; A Yearlong Road Trip in Search of Christian Faith. She is currently at work
on several new books.
Tom Shea is the son of Irish immigrants raised on Springfield's Hungry Hill. Nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 2005, he was awarded the New England Associated Press News Executive Award for the best local column in 2004, which the Boston Globe noted, "chronicles little-noticed acts of kindness and grace by everyday people." The year 2011 marks his 39th year writing
for Springfield Newspapers. He started as a sports writer and eventually covered the Boston Red Sox - a "pretty good job" in his own words, for a Yankee fan. He then worked as a general assignment reporter for thirteen years until being given the column.
Strempek Shea is a member of the faculty at the University of Southern Maine¹s Stonecoast MFA program in creative writing and is writer-in-residence at Bay Path College. Shea has taught journalism at Springfield, Holyoke Community College and Elms Colleges. Both writers have
numerous published works of freelance journalism and fiction.
