Biography
Some things you wouldn’t know about me from reading The Middle Place:
I don’t exercise, not only because I have inertia issues but also because it cuts way down on the number of showers I need to take. Other things that most people I know do that I do not are cook, shop and properly moisturize. I also cut my own hair and my childrens’ and ever so occasionally, when he’s trying to make up for something, my husband’s. I would cut yours too if you would let me.
I am interested in faith and people who have it. I am writing about it (essays, outlines for a novel, character sketches, a screenplay?) and thinking about it most days of the week. Although I am skeptical, I do pray. I do not go to church. I will always be Catholic (like I will always have brown eyes) but may grow into something else as well.
I worked in non-profits for ten years. It basically created my worldview and consequently, I try to compensate for my good luck by doing things for people who seem to have no luck whatsoever. My big thing is education (charter schools and tutoring programs) and I am also way into the YMCA. I am not doing enough but I hope the book creates new opportunities to be useful.
I went to three great schools: Radnor High School, where Dr. Dewsnap showed me what actual scholarship looks like; The University of Richmond, which was a whole lot of fun and introduced me to some of my all-time favorite people; and San Francisco State University (for a Masters in Literature) where I was humbled by 1,000 page-a-week reading assignments and floored that for $600 a semester, I could sit in weekly seminars with professors like Michael Krasny (host of KQED Forum) and Bruce Avery.
I love live performances of almost any kind, especially music but also lectures and readings and plays. And the truth is that every time I’ve ever been in an audience, I have had the urge to raise my hand and add a little to the conversation. So here I am, raising my hand.
Other projects I’m a part of are:
www.circusofcancer.org a web site to teach you how to love someone through cancer
www.greatergoodparents.org a web site to help us all be more deliberate and informed parents
Kelly Corrigan's utterly absorbing memoir, The Middle Place, is wry, smart, and often heart wrenching. Corrigan takes us down memory lane and then, at the same time, down some other, darker road most of us hope never to travel. Yet we follow her all the way, quite willingly, I might add, thanks to her sharp eye for the details and her great sense of humor.
Kelly Corrigan takes what might have been a fairly standard story of survival, and reframed it, most charmingly, as a coming of age narrative. We see here a headstrong girl, under the most severe adversity, turn into a genuinely strong woman.
An amazing story told with steep honesty, buckets of humor and, above all, integrity. The Middle Place is memoir at its highest form.
