Change begins with conversation Though my three siblings and I saw our parents as punitive and/or ineffective, it also became clear that they were far more successful building a satisfying marriage once we were no longer living with them. It’s not uncommon for relationships to improve (or collapse)...

Please join me for a Reading & Discussion of my latest book, Orphans Wednesday, April 5 7:00 PM Women of Irish Heritage Meeting The Shillelagh Club 648 Prospect Avenue (Upstairs) West Orange, NJ

Molly rated 5 Stars – It was amazing Joan Cusack Handler’s parents are so vivid in this memoir that they fly off the page. How often in a daughter’s memoir—here a memoir of her Irish Catholic parents, new to New York and bringing up a family in the 1950’s—can you actually feel the voices...

Sep 5, 2016 11:45 AM Anisah Abdullah  No one is taught how to cope with the death of a loved one, arguably the most emotionally painful experience in one’s life. After Joan Cusack Handler’s parents died, she decided to explore the aftermath in her latest book, “Orphans,” and reflect on her family...

A review by ForeWord Reviews Orphans Reviewed by Matt Sutherland May 27, 2016 From the founder of CavanKerry Press, this delightful memoir in verse bears witness to a complicated family history of Ireland’s Troubles, devout Catholicism, fierce maternal strength, aging, death, bitterness, and love....

  September 5 @ 7:00 pm – 9:00 pm Bryant Park, United States + Google Map The Bryant Park Reading Room hosts emerging and established poets through the summer with evening readings. Sit under the park’s London Plane trees and listen to the artists read their...

  CavanKerry, a not-for-profit literary press, aims to expand the reach of poetry to a general readership by publishing works that explore the emotional and psychological landscapes of everyday life. Come enjoy recent work by publisher and poet Joan Cusack Handler, “…whose verse memoir, Orphans…tackles...

Top Customer Reviews 5.0 out of 5 stars A Successful and Engaging Integration of Poetry and the Lyric Memoir By Gray Jacobik on July 13, 2016 I’ve read and re-read “Orphans” and much of it keeps coming back to me whenever I’m walking or driving or have an idle moment (waiting in a security...

  Orphans is now up in the Summer 2016 Online Edition of Rain Taxi Review of Books. Read the review below….. ORPHANS Joan Cusack Handler CavanKerry Press ($18) by James Naiden This collection of poems is an extended elegy to Joan Cusack Handler’s parents, who were immigrants from Ireland....