About Your Host
EMILY SUE HARVEY

I write to make a difference. I was in my senior year of college, preparing to teach Secondary English Education when the death of my eleven-year-old daughter, Angela, pivoted me in another direction. Amid devastation, I floundered for some way to cope. Being an English major, I used my Advanced Composition and Rhetoric course to aid and abet me in the difficult survival process.

Writing my first manuscript, A Rose in Time, memoirs of my child’s death and coping with grief, was a pivotal catalyst in my healing. It would also provide fodder for my later stories. I wrote copiously for three years. At a certain point, the venting and purging ebbed and light broke through the darkness, warming and sustaining—renewing me.

Years later, in the anthology, From Eulogy to Joy, I would draw from those earlier writings to chronicle how my family survived devastation. Another time, my seven-year-old David’s way of handling grief appeared in the story “David’s Surprise” in Chocolate for a Woman’s Spirit. It is still featured on www.chocolateforwomen.com. That story also showed up in Compassionate Friends magazine with a later follow-up story, entitled “The Gift Goes On.” In Chicken Soup for the Grandma’s Soul, I lauded my mother’s enormous healing support during that time.

With transformed insight, I turned to other, more upbeat topics. Writing, begun as therapy, quickly evolved into a passion. Life, to me, is all about helping each other along the way and writing is one way for me to do this.

In the early ‘80s, armed with fresh purpose and focus, I discovered the Southeastern Writers Association, enrolled in its annual June Workshop at St. Simons Island, Georgia, and before that spring week ended, encountered and bonded ineradicably with the writer within. In the next four years, I wrote profusely. My annual workshop submissions reaped eighteen awards, boosting me to keep on doing what I loved. I joined the SWA Board of Directors in 1986 and served as President in 2007-2008. I did this as payback to those who once made a difference in my own writing career. I firmly believe that on our road to success, we should gather others up and help them along the way.

Since then, dozens of my upbeat stories have appeared in “Chicken Soup for the Soul” series, “Chocolate for Women” series, The Embrace of a Father, Whispering in God’s Ear, From Eulogy to Joy, Compassionate Friends magazine, True Story, and Woman’s World. I also penned six novels. Completing those brought me to the realization that I desperately needed an agent to manage my career.

Kay Allenbaugh, author of the best-selling “Chocolate for Women” series, referred me to New York agent, Peter Miller. He liked my stories and now represents me. I’m working on a novel right now that The Story Plant will publish in the summer of 2009.

In the early nineties, my “Chicken Soup” story, “Making a Difference,” chronicled how I used a newsletter to bring my old high school class together on a regular basis, to laugh together and weep together. I received mail from all over the world from folks hungry for such bonding with their old schoolmates. Again, I marveled at the far-reaching impact of well-placed words.

How does my family handle my obsession with words? They’re my greatest fans. Pam and David both appear in From Eulogy to Joy. So does Angel, our youngest, born a year after her sister Angela Sue’s death. Lee, my husband, is my staunchest supporter. All of my family, including my eight beautiful grandchildren, would and do move mountains to give me my writing space. They understand that, next to them, writing is still my main passion. It is an instrument by which I reach hearts, by which I say, “Hang in there—things will get better.” It’s a way I celebrate the touching of souls. To me, all writing is inspirational. It doesn’t have to be religious to stir. Anything from the heart, that leaves one feeling better for having read it, is inspirational.

How deep is my fervor to write? As corny and clichéd as it sounds, I cannot not write. I’m drawn to it like Pooh to honey. Like Bogey to Bacall. Like lungs to oxygen. Oh well, you get it. It gives me energy and focus. It gives me purpose. The written word is so—powerful.

It helps me to make a difference.