Come workshop writing with artist in resident Jan Shoemaker
By Lindsay Simmons
Sun contributor
Jan Shoemaker’s good friend once told her, “It’s hard to be human.” This resonated with Shoemaker, especially because a majority of her work has been loosely based on that simple statement of truth.
A large portion of her time is spent teaching high school, but Shoemaker is also an essayist. Her essays have earned attention from notable publications including National Public Radio and The Sun magazine, as well as some university journals and religious magazines. “I seem to get most feedback on the pieces which examine the struggle I like to think we all undergo to be decent human beings — to be loving and constant and patient and unselfish,” Shoemaker says.
She is Glen Arbor Art Association’s next artist in residence at Port Oneida’s Thoreson Farm, August 16–29. “I applied for the residency because the idea of having two uninterrupted weeks to write seems like heaven,” Shoemaker says. She is ready to escape her home in Okemos, Mich. and to make the most of her summer vacation. “I will spend my time working on new essays and perhaps on revising some former essays into pieces that will fit together nicely in a book, without repetition,” she explains.
Shoemaker’s essays often revolve around loneliness, loss, love and death. Readers will find that the traditionally somber topics are infused with humor, and her tone can contain notes of positivity. “I need to laugh once in a while when I read,” Shoemaker says. She recognizes the healing power of laughter, and therefore she is able to avoid being overwhelmingly heavy while writing about topics such as her mother’s battle with Alzheimer’s.
“I write because playing with language is the best game I know,” Shoemaker says. “I’ve been writing all my life — poetry first, before I figured out it was too hard to do well.” She describes her success as an essayist as “Class D runs and field goals on a page.” She explains, “I feel like my tiny breakthroughs in insight and articulation … matter, a bit, beyond the lonely ruminations of my private self.”
Shoemaker writes for the opportunity to relate to her readers. “A community of understanding grows out of individual scribblings if the scribbler occasionally breaks through her blundering and scores,” she says.
Aside from her essays, Shoemaker is hands-on with her community in Lower Michigan. She teaches American Literature and Comparative Religion at Haslett High School. “I love discussing literature and ideas with students,” she says. “I love challenging them to see things in new ways.” Shoemaker dreads the stacks of papers she grades every week, but “it goes with the territory” she says.
Shoemaker was born in Michigan and she has lived here most of her life. She is fond of the college town environment that surrounds Michigan State University, but she looks forward to heading north, too. “Every June my family vacations at Crystal Lake and we make forays into beautiful Glen Arbor to shop at The Cottage Bookshop and walk the beach at Glen Haven, among other things,” she says.
“There are so many places I love up north, naturally,” Shoemaker says. “I love the bluffs at Empire; I love the beach at Glen Haven; I love the view of Glen Lake from Alligator Hill; I love the Indian Trail in Benzie County.” Her vacation spots encourage her sentiment for life. “I am always trying to decide where to have my ashes flung after I die and every time I go on another walk in northern Michigan, I change my mind,” she says.
For the evening of Thursday, August 27, the Art Association has invited Shoemaker to do a reading of her work. “This I am happy to do, but I plan to use this evening to do a bit of workshopping with the people who are kind enough to attend,” she says. “I assume anyone who comes to hear me read is interested in writing, probably writes, and would prefer doing a bit of that to simply listening to me the whole time.” Shoemaker has organized some writing activities to be shared among those who attend her presentation and workshop.
Shoemaker’s humble self-image has surely made her essays more tangible to her readers, and her humor is softening the hardness of life that we know exists as humans. All are invited to explore her technique and perspective on August 27, 7:30 p.m. at the Glen Arbor Art Association.