OFTA Features Local Writer

Join Old Friends Talk Arts (OFTA) at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, May 12th at the Buchanan Center for the Arts in downtown Monmouth, IL for a presentation by Ms. Sue Van Kirk titled “A Town, a School, and the Students Who Taught Me” Her collection of short stories, Mr. Vonnegut and Me (and Other Tales from a Teaching Life) will be published by iUniverse in August/September. One story from this collection, “War and Remembrance,” has already been published in Teacher Magazine.


Many locals will know Sue as a colleague or as a teacher of our children, so this should be a most interesting session. She will be dealing with how you accomplish the task of writing about your local community and will also read a portions of one of the stories.

Susan Van Kirk was born and raised in Galesburg, Illinois. She graduated from Knox College and took a job teaching at Monmouth High School where she taught English and speech for 34 years. She was department chairman for most of those years and, along with Jan Willhardt, began an Honors English program at the high school. She earned a M. Ed from the University of Illinois in 1999, and since her retirement from the public schools in 2001 has been teaching in the Education and Communications Studies departments at Monmouth College. She is also the author of the Cliffs Notes editions of Hawthorne’s The Scarlet Letter and Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest.