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Colleen Redman
Workshop: Local Voices of Roanoke Valley
Time: 3:45 - 4:30pm
Place: Auditorium |
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http://www.silverandgold.swva.net/
The Jim and Dan Stories: A Journey of Grief and Faith: The last few weeks of my brothers' lives played out like the conclusion of a dramatic Hollywood script, a plot with a twist. The road trip they took, two weeks before the first death, became the beginning of a larger journey, the one in which they both leave this world.
Although their deaths were the catalyst for this book, the stories are as much about our lives as Redmans, growing up in an Irish Catholic, working-class clan in the South Shore of Boston, Massachusetts, during the 50's - 70's.
The book also chronicles the experience of writing from my cabin home in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, in the midst of the acute stages of grief. It reveals the identiity crisis that surfaced in the me after the loss of my brothers, and the resolution, I eventually came to - that within loss there is much to be received, and through the experience of death, life can be made even more precious.
I like to think that Jim and Dan are still on their journey. I like to think of them as our family's pioneers.
-- Collen Redman
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| Colleen Redman’s first book The Jim and Dan Stories: A Journey of Grief and Faith is a memoir of growing up in a family of 11 and losing two brothers within a month’s time. The book is being used as required reading in a grief and loss class at Radford University and has spurred a reunion in the Massachusetts coastal town Colleen grew up in. The Jim and Dan Stories and Colleen’s first collection of poetry, Muses Like Moonlight, are available via her website www.silverandgold.swva.net. Her poems have appeared in Mothering Magazine, We’moon, Mobius, Poet’s Against the War online, and in a variety of local publications. She writes political commentaries that have been widely published on the web and in the Roanoke Times newspaper and is a WVTF radio essayist. Colleen, who writes daily to her web log, looseleafnotes.com, is co-editor of A Museletter, a community newsletter in Floyd, Virginia, where she currently lives. |
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Mason Adams
Leonard Adkins
Nancy Wright Beasley
Ellen Byerrum
Susann Cokal
HelenKay Dimon
A. Roger Ekrich
Fred First
Jon Harris
Gary Jackson
Mary McManaway
James W. Morrison
Becky Mushko
Colleen Redman
Sally Roseveare
Michael Shoulders
Matthew Warner
Jack Zell
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