Otherwise, I'm Fine Book Launch with Barbara Presnell

Apr 22, 2025 @ 6pm | Location: Randolph Arts Guild, 123 Sunset Ave, Asheboro, NC 27203

Apr 22, 2025 @ 6pm
Location: Randolph Arts Guild, 123 Sunset Ave, Asheboro, NC 27203
Hosted by: Randolph Arts Guild

Join us for a book launch for Otherwise, I'm Fine by Barbara Presnell! In her new memoir, Barbara shares her story of unresolved grief for her father and her family's hard-won healing.

When her husband Bill died in 1969, Tina Presnell gathered her three children. "We won't talk about this," she said. "It will be easier that way." Thus began, in the Presnell family, a decades-long period of silence and intense, isolated grieving for this ordinary man.

In 2012, several years after her mother's death, Barbara Presnell recovered her father's World War II belongings: a scrapbook, news clippings, documents, and letters. Recalling how much his war experiences had meant to him, Barbara, along with her estranged brother and sister, planned a journey to travel their father's route through Europe. From Omaha Beach in Normandy, France, to the western bank of the Elbe River in Magdeburg, Germany, the siblings would follow the movements of their father's division and rediscover his stories, share memories, and renew family bonds.

In Otherwise, I'm Fine, Presnell tells the story of her grief and, across her tour of western Europe, the breakthroughs that released her from recurring depression, resolved her conflicted grief for her mother, and returned her beloved father to her and her siblings as a living memory.

A lifelong Southerner, Barbara Presnell is the author of two award-winning poetry books, essays, and theatrical performances. Presnell is a senior lecturer emeritus in writing at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. A graduate of the University of North Carolina at Greensboro's MFA in Creative Writing program, she has received two NC Arts Council Fellowships and is a resident fellow at Willapa Bay AiR, the Hambidge Center, and the Wildacres Residency program. She lives in Lexington, NC, with her husband, Bill Keesler, and rescue pup, Colby.

Reception at 6pm and program at 7pm.

Hosted by the Randolph Arts Guild.