MELANIE BROOKS

A HARD SILENCE

in conversation with Suzanne Strempek Shea

Because of a disastrous contamination of Canada's blood supply, Melanie Brooks's father, after receiving open heart surgery involving a blood transplant, discovered he was HIV-positive.  This was the mid-80's, when HIV and AIDS were surrounded with stigma and shame.  The family kept the diagnosis under wraps for ten long years, meanwhile carrying the burden of  her father's uncertain health and the anticipation of the loss to come.  Now, twenty years after her father's death, she recounts that struggle and reckons up the cost.

Melanie Brooks teaches writing at Northeastern University, narrative medicine at Bay Path University, and creative writing at Nashua Community College . She is the author of Writing Hard Stories: Celebrated Memoirists Who Shaped Art from Trauma, published 2017.

Suzanne Strempek Shea is the author of several novels, including Hoopi Shoopi Donna, Around Again, and Make a Wish, But Not for Money; a memoir, Songs from a Lead-Lined Room;  and numerous works of nonfiction.