Margaret Blanchard

Margaret M. Blanchard grew up on the road, traveling with her family throughout the United States, Europe, and Asia. She has taught writing, literature, women's studies, and creativity studies in a variety of contexts, including private liberal arts colleges, state universities, and progressive education programs. She was also an activist in the civil rights, anti-war, women's and environmental movements and involved with union and community organizing. She has published six novels, two books of poetry, and three books on intuition. Retired as Professor Emerita of Graduate Studies, she's now a fulltime writer, artist, and creativity guide, living in rural Vermont.

1. Wandering Potatoes: Best Historical Novel of 2003, Award by High Country Friends of the Tuolumne County, California Library, 2004:

Review: "Dreaming back through the Motherline, Margaret Blanchard brings alive her own family's stories and, in the process, frees the trapped ancestral stories in us all.

Compelling and compassionate, this books sings to the heart."

--Patricia Monaghan, author of O Mother Sun! and Dancing with Chaos, editor of Unlacing: Ten Irish-American Women Poets.

2. Review of Hatching

Review by Angela de Hoyos, Author of Woman, Woman (Arte Publico Press)

"The Spanish-American philosopher George Santayana, once said, 'There is no cure for birth and death, save to enjoy the interval.' Fair enough. But when the enjoyment of that interval is necessarily placed on 'hold', we must look around for a suitable detour. Just ask Brigid, the shy but lovable and ever-resourceful Sheroe of this extraordinary book. She may also point out that we should never underestimate the ability of the human spirit to overcome life’s obstacles.

"The story-plot is centered in three distinct protagonist-characters, cast together by dint of circumstance. As they grow and evolve within a mutual conviviality, they eventually realize that they must venture outside their confines in order to follow their ultimate destiny.

"Manuel Flores is a dedicated and compassionate psychology intern. War-torn veteran, sensitive and restless, he nonetheless has his life’s work pretty much cut out for him. While Brigid, as a precocious and inquisitive adolescent, has yet to discover the mixed bag of revelations and relationships -- some happy, some not -- which will become the facts of her life. She must learn, perforce, to adapt each time anew to her immediate surroundings: She will wear boy’s clothes, so as to conceal her gender. (It is easier for a boy to find, and keep, a job.) And then there is the traumatic experience of the loss of her innocence. She soon learns that a young girl - with no visible father-head - becomes an easy prey for men.

Elena, Manuel’s mother, will surely receive a good share of the reader’s attention. An idealist, she believes that everyone, regardless of birth, deserves a place of dignity under the sun. She represents the revered Latina matriarch, the captain of the ship. She is the typical den mother--one to whom la familia turns for inspiration and guidance.

"I thoroughly enjoyed reading this fascinating book because it is both entertaining and stimulating. The characters and their stories are so articulate that the book vibrates with the energy of life. In it, the reader will find not only sagacious but irreverent humor as well, along with the user-friendly spice of wisdom. There is due respect for Planet Earth and all living creatures, large and small. There also is deep tolerance, coupled with empathy for, and understanding of, the human condition. We cannot ask for more. I recommend it for a wide range of mature readers."

3. Reviews of Who?

"I really liked Who? It works as a whole, with wonderful humor, political and psychological insight, mystery, intrigue, and depth.

Blanchard captures a lot on many levels and she does it with great wit." -- Bernice Mennis, author of Breaking Out of Prison.

"I really enjoyed this novel. The mystery is compelling. Xavy is enchanting. I really felt for her. It kept me reading late at night."

--Janet Calico, author of Gifts.

4.Review of Queen Bea:

"Blanchard's book is bound to become a classic for women's studies and contemporary literature courses alike because it grounds an engaging

second wave feminist novel in explicating essays that both honor and explode the typical canon of options used." -- Ida Kialutsi, poet and artist

5. Review of Change of Course: The Education of Jessie Adamson

"Margaret M. Blanchard, educator, author, and NAPT board member, modestly describes Change of Course as “a novel of ideas.” While it undeniable is that, it is also so much more. True, this novel is an extremely erudite, well-researched book that not only references theories from multiple disciplines and traditions both East and West, feminist thought and traditional ways of thinking, delightful passages of fiction-- a “story within the story,” but also includes poetry. The novel spins a web of interconnected questions that grow out of the richness of these fields:

1) What does progressive, holistic, collaborative, democratic, student-centered graduate education look like?

2) How shall we think about “creativity” and its relationship to human growth and development? What is the place of subjectivity and intuition in research?

3) How do the expressive arts therapies differ from “talk therapies” and where do they overlap? Can feelings be educated through the creative arts?

4) Can we create a “whole language therapy” that would reconstitute the “original unity between sound, gesture, image, movement and words?” Might a unified arts therapy offer a medium for enhancing emotional intelligence?

5) How does progressive education help to guide the learner to “want to cultivate larger worlds” and “to inhabit contexts more expansive than themselves? How does the process of innovative education transform both learners and mentors?

6) What keeps educational institutions vital and growing? What convergence of factors leads to their decline?

7) How does systems theory help us understand the impact of a given political moment on the collective and the individual within educational institutions?

These questions should be of wide interest to all educators and learners. However, without the array of memorable characters whose lives we get to know from viewpoints inside and outside themselves, this novel would not hold our attention. Central to this book are the lives of Jessie Adamson, the adult learner, her mentor Dr. Sophie Green (who is struggling with the prospect of retiring), and Jessie’s field supervisor, Keyla Gold; their work together, which Blanchard records in detail, demonstrates the best practiced offered by the innovative, low-residency program from which Jessie graduates, transformed by the process into a confident “knower” who trusts herself. Blanchard creates a canvas which also includes memorable vignettes of other students and mentors who have dedicated their lives to building and preserving this program.

"Blanchard allows us to see the strengths and vulnerabilities of her characters and convincingly shows the complex process of inquiry through which Jessie works with her mentors to develop her own ideas for her final project focusing on expressive arts therapies. The principles of learning embedded in this novel are also central to the philosophy and training programs of the National Association for Poetry Therapy, which gets a cameo appearance when Jessie is introduced to poetry therapy at a national conference. After attending only a few workshops, she is soon sorry she only signed up for one day and is particularly moved by the non-judgemental quality and safe atmosphere at the meeting. In one workshop “free write,” she allows herself to express powerful feelings about a family tragedy which allows her transform grief.

"Yet, in spite of the very positive depiction of innovative adult learning, Blanchard’s novel also has an underside. Even as she applauds the powerful and positive transformations brought about by this form of education, she also exposes the heartless, corporate mentality brought in by the new administrators of this fictional institution who are incrementally dismantling the progressive program whose accomplishments Blanchard so proudly displays and whose dissolution she shows us with deep sadness.

This aspect of the novel can be read as a kind of caveat for all progressive institutions that are seen as marginal in times of a conservative back-lash, but we must have hope that with the recent change of administration, we may be entering a different historical cycle in which educational innovations will be encouraged, not destroyed. This novel is sure to provoke more questions than answers, which is what progressive education at its best intends. The beautiful many-chambered nautilus on the cover of Change of Course offers a welcoming invitation for us to take heart and possibly to change our own course of living.

--Evelyn Torton Beck, author of Nice Jewish Girls