Listening to Kathy
For the Leissner family, domestic terror had a private face.
“He’s really special to me.”
“I sure do hate to leave Texas . . .”
In several hundred pages of letters during this period, Kathy’s voice has been preserved, revealing her isolation as well as her brave face. The correspondence was a crucial lifeline during a time when she did not have a phone. “You don’t know how much better they make me feel,” Kathy wrote, referring to her mother’s letters and pictures that spring. “I’ve worn them out already.”
Jo Scott-Coe’s first book, Teacher at Point Blank, was listed as a “Great Read” by Ms. Magazine. Her nonfiction has appeared in many venues, including Salon, Cultural Weekly, Fourth Genre, River Teeth, Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies, Ninth Letter, and The Los Angeles Times. A graduate of the MFA program at the University of California Riverside, Scott-Coe currently works as an associate professor of English at Riverside City College. She also teaches community writing workshops for the Inlandia Institute. Her second book, MASS, is forthcoming from Writ Large Press in summer 2016.
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