Author Archives: stephanieshafranpoet

     As this new year begins, I’m reminded of a brief, unique teaching experience that began some 42 years ago this month. Though temporary and lasting only five months, the course I created and taught that semester at a community college has made an indelible mark in my memory for reasons that will be described here.Continue reading “A Memorable Teaching Experience”

Thursday, December 8, I’ll be reading at the Northampton Senior Center at 1pm. 

My “Little Bit of Paradise”          In the 1920s, my grandparents and their three children lived in Dorchester, Massachusetts. As the owner of Yellin Dry Goods store in downtown Boston, my grandfather dreaded his daily commute by automobile to and from work. When he learned that a place called Hull, a lovely seaside town on Boston’sContinue reading “I LOVE HULL”

Tzebrokhnkayt: the quality of broken heartedness that gives strength in healing When twenty first-grade students and six adult staff members were murdered by a young adult assassin at Sandy Hook ten years ago, I reeled with feelings of rage, sadness, and horror. Yet almost immediately, as an elementary school counselor, I had to put personalContinue reading “Tzebrokhnkayt”

         It was 1995. Home with three young daughters, I joined a weekly women’s writing group led by Amherst Writers & Artists founder Pat Schneider. A fledgling poet,  I read my poems aloud for the first time. Yet to be discovered was the arduous journey from silence to freedom that this process of writing andContinue reading “Have You Ever Won Anything?”