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Born in Brooklyn, New York, Patricia Monaghan was raised in
Alaska, where much of her family still lives and where she learned to appreciate
nature’s bounty and challenge. During her many years in interior Alaska,
she worked as a science and environmental reporter; she also built a
superinsulated three-bedroom home that was heated by a single woodstove.
Her interest in alternative energy never subsided, and she is presently at work
retrofitting her old Victorian home in Chicago to save energy. Holding a
Ph.D. in science and literature, Patricia teaches ecology, writing, and
interdisciplinary research skills at DePaul University’s School for New
Learning.
Mythology
has been part of Patricia’s life since childhood, when she was caught attempting
to remove an adult book (Bullfinch’s Mythology) from a public library
that denied children the right to read adult literature. (She intended to
return the book, but the librarian didn’t believe that.) Even at the age
of nine, she recognized the power of myths to reveal the diverse possibilities
of being human. She now owns her own copy of Bullfinch, as well as a
substantial personal library of rare mythology and folklore volumes.
And she continues to believe in myth’s healing power.
Patricia
discovered poetry first through the Irish songs her family sung and later
through the works of Alaskan poets laureate Margaret Mielke and O.T.Beirne, her
high school English teachers. She counts herself lucky in discovering the
work of Edna St. Vincent Millay when she was only 14; she still treasures the
65-cent paperback collection that first revealed the passion and spirituality
possible in women’s poetry. An undergraduate English degree at the
University of Minnesota was followed by a masters’ from the same institution,
with a thesis focusing on Wallace Stevens; she later earned her M.F.A. in
creative writing at the University of Alaska, where her thesis was the
collection that later became the award-winning Seasons of the Witch.
At the Union Institute, her dissertation, Quantum Poetics: Science and Spirit
in 20th Century American Poetry, focused on Heisenberg’s
uncertainty principle and movements in contemporary letters including
hermeneutics.
Widow of the great science fiction writer Robert Shea, Patricia today lives in the tree-lined neighborhood of Beverly in Chicago with her husband, physician Michael McDermott. Together, they are developing a vineyard at Brigit Rest, a 23-acre property in the scenic Driftless Area of Wisconsin, where they are planting Louise Swenson, Prarie Star, Marechal Foch, and Frontenac. Maeve Wines hopes to have its first vintage available for tasting in 2009. In the meantime, there are also wild plums to harvest and large organic gardens to tend.
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