Readings and Workshops

An experienced reader, creative writing teacher and public speaker, Joan Cusack Handler is available for poetry and prose readings, for teaching writing workshops and for lecturing on the writing life.

As a clinical psychologist, writer and publisher of CavanKerry Pess, she is in a unique position to understand and discuss the many roadblocks and resolutions that writer's experience. Beyond the real life challenges of negotiating family and work lives with creative lives, writers struggle with profound emotional and psychological challenges. The 'search" for voice and beyond that to the elusive first book often uncovers very painful feelings of shame, fear, isolation and envy. The process is much more complicated for the older writer. Handler explores these issues in lectures and discussion groups with members of creative writing programs at universities across the country.

Since the publication of her second poetry collection, The Red Canoe: Love in Its Making, a verse memoir that tells the story of a marriage, Joan had been speaking to and reading for couples groups. A practicing psychologist and former couples therapist herself, she unveils the multileveled role of parents, religion, children, illness and the emotional/psychological development of the two spouses on the frail and treacherous terrain that is marriage.

Upcoming Events

Poets Second Wednesday Series
November 11
7pm
William Carlos Williams Center
for the Arts
Rutherford, NJ

Poets Wednesday Series
January 13, 2010
8pm
Barrons Art Center
Woodbridge, NJ