{"id":4673,"date":"2020-03-04T12:45:24","date_gmt":"2020-03-04T17:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/?page_id=4673"},"modified":"2020-03-04T12:45:27","modified_gmt":"2020-03-04T17:45:27","slug":"michele-herman","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/michele-herman\/","title":{"rendered":"Michele Herman"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

Once, when I was around ten, I picked up the upstairs phone extension and realized my father was already on the line downstairs. I don\u2019t know who he was talking to but I do know he was talking about a girl he knew who never gave up, and he had that catch in his voice that I recognized as mingled admiration and pride. As I eavesdropped it became clear he was talking about me, which was very interesting because I saw myself as someone who gave up all the time. Sometimes I didn\u2019t even try. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I\u2019m not sure anymore if this story is\na memory or a dream. I\u2019ve come to think of it as a prophecy, because I\u2019ve grown\npretty dogged over the years. As a result my life is far more full than that\ngirl in the last house at the bottom of the big hill on the last lane in town\never dared dream for herself. This is one reason I have always been drawn career-wise\nto teaching and story-wise to redemption tales \u2013 I understand those who are\ncapable of much more than they think they are better than I understand the\nopposite kind. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My hilly Connecticut hometown had a\ncouple of high spots where, on a clear day, we could see the Manhattan skyline\nglittering in the distance. It took me a long time to consider that it might be\nbeckoning to me. After college I taught high school English at the next town\nover and then wrote for a local magazine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did eventually propel myself to\nColumbia for grad school. I chose a relatively sensible MFA in nonfiction,\nthough every week I sidled over to the inboxes in the office where the fiction\nand poetry students dropped off their work, borrowed copies to read hungrily on\nmy own, and snuck them back before anyone noticed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

During that time I was lucky enough\nto get a room at International House, the grad-school dorm and wildly\nsuccessful social experiment funded by the Rockefellers in the 1920s. Suddenly\nI had 500 friendly neighbors from all over the world (and it was there I met\nthe Jersey boy I later married in the I. House ballroom). I took up bike riding\nas my main mode of transportation in the blessedly flat borough of Manhattan. I\norganized readings for Columbia\u2019s literary magazine, corresponding with the\nlikes of Annie Dillard, Toni Morrison and Elie Wiesel. After a reading \u2013 one of\nhis last — I helped Bernard Malamud put on his galoshes. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It turned out I loved living in the\nthick of things.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I became a freelance magazine writer,\nand I co-authored the award-winning Bicycle\nBlueprint: A Plan to Bring Bicycling into the Mainstream in New York City<\/em>. The\nfuture husband and I moved downtown and found ourselves becoming Villagers,\ngrowing more bohemian as Greenwich Village grew less so, working hard in\nvarious organizations fighting overdevelopment, including one called Save the\nVillage, a reincarnation of Jane Jacobs\u2019 earlier group.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Meanwhile we raised two terrific\nsons. I volunteered in the classrooms and served on the governing bodies of all\ntheir public schools. I wrote lots of columns for The Villager<\/em>, our local weekly paper. I found myself a first-rate\nfiction master class at The Writers Studio, and began publishing stories. I\npicked up where I\u2019d left off as a teacher, and now am a veteran fiction, poetry\nand memoir teacher in the school\u2019s thriving online program. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When our sons set off on their own\nadventures and the magazine industry dried up, I became a writing coach and\ndevelopmental editor. I love helping writers as they find the strength and\ndevelop the skills to conceive, stick with, finish and polish a manuscript. Receiving\ntheir published books in the mail is pretty gratifying too. Three years after I\nstarted writing poems, I published a chapbook called Victory Boulevard<\/em> (Finishing Line Press, 2018). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I also took up all the extracurricular\narts I had given up on or not dared try as a child: acting in community theater\nat the great Hudson Guild, studying piano, and doing spoken word in open mics\nand cabarets, often alongside my singing husband. I created new translations of\n65 Jacques Brel songs. I won some awards, including the New York Press\nAssociation prize for best columnist and two Willis Barnstone Translation Prizes.\nI felt a particular pride when my Connecticut high school added me to its Wall\nof Honor, a place I never expected to find myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My novel Save the Village<\/em> began with a specific image of two former best\nfriends standing in a doorway. It also began as a love letter to the\nneighborhood I\u2019ve called home for so long, with my main character Becca serving\nas my prototypical feisty tenement-dwelling Villager. It occurs to me now that\nI was imagining a life path that\u2019s nearly the opposite of my own. Becca and I met\nsomewhere in the middle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Once, when I was around ten, I picked up the upstairs phone extension and realized my father was already on the line downstairs. I don\u2019t know who he was talking to but I do know he was talking about a girl he knew who never gave up, and he had that catch in his voice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4674,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":{"0":"post-4673","1":"page","2":"type-page","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"entry"},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/P9DpGh-1dn","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":71,"url":"https:\/\/regalhousepublishing.com\/lily-iona-mackenzie\/","url_meta":{"origin":4673,"position":0},"title":"Lily Iona MacKenzie","author":"Jaynie","date":"January 2, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Lily Iona MacKenzie sprouted on the Canadian prairies under cumulus clouds that bloomed everywhere in Alberta\u2019s big sky. 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