Writing Workshop with Barbara Presnell, Otherwise, I'm Fine (Columbia, SC)

May 24, 2025 @ 10am - 12pm | Location: South Carolina Military Museum, 1 National Guard Rd, Columbia, SC 29201

May 24, 2025 @ 10am - 12pm
Location: South Carolina Military Museum, 1 National Guard Rd, Columbia, SC 29201
Hosted by: South Carolina Military Museum

Join us for a reading/writing workshop led by Barbara Presnell called, “We Cannot Forget”: Telling Our Stories of War at Home and on the Battlefield. In addition to presenting insights from her own research and writing, she will help participants develop their own ideas for research and writing.

In her new memoir, Otherwise, I'm Fine, 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.

Registration is not required for this free event.

Hosted by South Carolina Military Museum.