Celebrating Alumni Authors

Our Spartans are making a difference across the world. Some do it with their hands and voice. Others are breaking barriers and bringing people together with their words. Discover books written by – or in collaboration with – Castleton alumni.

Matthew Forrest Esenwine ’89: Inspiring a Love for Reading

Communications alum Matthew Forrest Esenwine is the author of several successful children’s books, including “Flashlight Night,” one of the New York Public Library’s Top 100 kids books of 2017, and “Once Upon Another Time,” which was called “a necessary addition to picture book collections” by the American Library Association’s Booklist.

Esenwine began writing for a young audience through his love of creating poetry.

“After years of having adult-oriented poems published in various journals and anthologies, I found I had also collected several children’s poems that I didn’t know what to do with,” he said. “I think writing for children comes naturally to me because I love being able to tell a story or describe a scene in as few words as possible, in a tiny, tight, compact space, which is precisely what poetry is all about.”

Although he was already a published poet in college, making a living as an author was not something Esenwine had yet considered. In his sophomore year at Castleton, he found a job in radio at a station near where he lived in Concord, New Hampshire. He thought his voice might be his source of income. By the time he graduated in 1989, he had three years of professional experience in radio and would spend the next 25 years trying to scratch out a living on the air.

“During those years, I moved around from station to station in the New England area and even lived in Nashville for about a year,” Esenwine said. “But I was always writing, whether it was for commercials, comedy bits, or promotions. All of this helped forge the career I have now.”

In 2012, Esenwine and his wife did the math on his radio salary and realized that if they subtracted the expenses for commuting, gas, and daycare, he would net about $150 a month. They decided that it would make more sense for him to stay home, take care of the kids, build his voiceover career – which he had been working on parallel to his career in morning radio – and take the time to develop his writing career.

“I now spend my days writing and revising book manuscripts and poems, working out ideas and concepts for new books and poems, or doing social media and other types of marketing for the books and poems I have out,” he said.

His voiceover business requires him to record audio for clients at a moment’s notice, so when he wakes up with a script in his inbox, that usually takes precedence because he knows this work has been the backbone of his writing career.

“I must have written and voiced thousands of radio commercials over the years, Esenwine said. “Little did I know that all that copywriting, coupled with my poetry, was preparing me for the world of children’s lit - where short, impactful vignettes and word economy are paramount.”

Esenwine recently returned to Castleton to speak with the children’s literature classes and give hard-earned guidance to students interested in the field.

“Take time to hone your skills, time to learn the industry, and the time to make connections,” he said. “Far too many people jump into children’s writing assuming it’s easy because “you’re just writing for kids.”

He also knows it is important for students to realize that jobs and careers can change, just like majors.

“When I began my freshman year in Haskell Hall, I had no idea I would one day be writing children’s books and voicing TV commercials halfway across the country.”

Esenwine’s latest book, “A Beginners Guide to Being Human,” will be released in October.

Stefanie Schaffer ‘20: Hope and Healing Through Writing

Stefanie Schaffer was a senior Community Health major at Castleton when she embarked on a dream vacation with her family to the Bahamas in 2018, a trip that would change her life forever. Schaffer was headed to see the swimming pigs of the Exuma Cays with her mother, sister, and stepfather when the tour boat she was on exploded right below her feet. The explosion severely injured her mother, killed another passenger, and left Schaffer with catastrophic injuries to her lower extremities, resulting in her lower legs being amputated, damage to her kidneys, liver, and spleen, and a spinal cord injury. She also suffered a traumatic brain injury and would spend four weeks in a coma with only a 50 percent chance of regaining consciousness.

“Mentally I would look around and see these machines that were keeping me alive, and I felt like I was lying in that room basically just waiting to die,” Schaffer writes.

She began writing “Without Any Warning: Casualties of a Caribbean Vacation” as a way to cope with the trauma of the accident and enduring the long, difficult recovery.

“Writing has always been natural for me, something I’ve really enjoyed, and it’s how I’ve expressed myself,” she explained. “I wasn’t thinking far ahead when I began writing. It was therapy for me; working through my story was something I wanted to do.”

She decided early on that she wanted to share her experience. “I had the idea that this would become a book, and hearing that other people who knew my story thought that I should write a book, too, gave me the validation to start the project,” she said.

Looking for a place to start, Schaffer sat down at Speakeasy Cafe with former Rutland Herald reporter Yvonne Daley.

“The original thought was that Yvonne would be helping me write or do the majority of the writing, which I didn’t know if I could do it because I had only ever done college papers and things like that,” she said. “But when I sent her my first chapter, she loved it, and I realized it was something I could do.”

“Without Any Warning” took approximately two years to write. As Schaffer navigated penning an honest portrayal of her experience, she kept in mind the reasons it was important for her to author the book.

“I needed to take control of the story and get my voice back,” she said. “I felt for the group of us who were on that boat that day, that our story wasn’t being recognized, specifically that the government of the Bahamas wanted it to go away. And so, this was me saying that we went through this.”

The book describes her family’s attempts to get answers for how this happened, who was accountable, and the frustration with the legal system in the Bahamas that seemed determined to erase the accident.

“I thought if I published it in black and white words, what happened to us would exist forever, and it would bring awareness and a warning to others of possible dangers when traveling outside of their country.”

The 25-year-old hopes her memoir will inspire others. Being an avid athlete and outdoor enthusiast, Schaffer has worked hard to get back into sports, including biking and crosscountry skiing. Her neighbor, who uses a hand cycle, lent her one and took her on her first bike ride.

“There are so many cruel moments that somehow are now in the past, each gone, each survived,” Schaffer writes about competing in her first bike race. “With each motion of these pedals, I again work through every emotion – the anger, the hatred, the heartbreak, the joy, the grief – and they carry me along like a strong wind behind me.”

Schaffer has become an advocate for body positivity, working with a talent agency in California on photoshoots for brands targeting young audiences. She posts photos on Instagram showing what it is like living with a spinal cord injury and as a double amputee. There is also a discussion in the works for a movie based on “Without any Warning,” and Schaffer hopes to write a children’s book in the future.

“It’s got to be hard for kids, who may have been born with a difference or were hurt early on in their life, to not have books for their age group that really represent them. I think it would be cool to do that,” she said.

In the end, challenging herself and doing the work to heal – both physically and mentally – has strengthened Schaffer. “Sometimes we think that failure or change is the end of the world, but it’s not,” she said. “It’s just a chance to learn and grow.”

James Kelly ’98: Reflections from the ICU

For over 20 years, alumnus James Kelly has pulled three 12-hour shifts a week as an intensive care unit nurse in an adult critical care unit at Lovelace Women’s Hospital, which serves the community of Albuquerque, New Mexico.

“When I leave the ICU after my shift, my mind remembers pieces of the day,” Kelly explains as he recounts the time spent at patients’ bedsides. “I think for the time I was there, the 12 hours, that, more than any other time in my life, I was at the heart of things, life, death, and suffering.”

Kelly is the author of “Where Night Is Day: The World of the ICU,” a nonfiction work that examines life in the intensive care unit of a teaching hospital in New Mexico over 13 weeks, the time of the average rotation of residents.

“The World of the ICU” is not only about medicine, nursing, and the progress of disease, it’s also about patients and families who suddenly find themselves there. The award-winning book bears witness to his daily observations and reflections and the role of caregiver.

“For patients in the ICU, their lives and the lives of families have changed in an instant. They are ordinary people facing uncertainty and tragedy. Their lives are exposed, and as a nurse, you are in the middle of their fear, hope, sadness, anger, and guilt,” he said.

Kelly’s career in nursing did not begin conventionally. Growing up in Cape Cod, he was drawn to writing because he felt literature, especially the literary realism of writers like John Updike and Richard Ford, explored everyday life, love, family, and loss.

“Reading, and then writing, was for me the way to understand my life and the world,” Kelly said.

After earning a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, Kelly studied Zen Buddhism in Rochester, New York, copyedited for a publishing company, worked as a waiter, and picked apples at an orchard in nearby Granville, New York. He met his future wife, Loren Sapphire, at the Rudolf Steiner Institute in Spring Valley, New York, where they were in a program that trained people to become Waldorf School teachers. The two soon moved to Minnesota where Kelly studied Theology at St. John’s College. Loren entered a pre-med program at its sister college, St. Benedict’s, before deciding to return to Vermont and pursue the Nursing program at Castleton.

“Loren decided to go to nursing school, and I decided to go after her. It was a practical decision. Nursing was something that would provide economic security while I continued to write,” Kelly said. “As it turned out, nursing became for me what we seek in any vocation: personal and professional fulfillment. It was a career of profound experiences. I think in nursing, I became the person I was meant to be.”

He earned his degree in Nursing from Castleton in 1998.

“Like many people, my life has been a bit of a wandering,” Kelly said. “I’m sharing this because my thoughts might resonate with others. I think now that if you’re lost or off track or on the wrong road, not on the road you think you should be on, there is beneficence in the world that is watching you and it will seed whatever ground you are on with the seeds that will blossom into the experiences you need.”

“To help someone survive a critical illness and begin the journey back to their life, to see the relief and joy on a family member’s face is the reward of ICU nursing,” he said.

Tara Kellogg ’95 & Dr. Cinda Kane ’94: Collaborating for Kids

Castleton alumna Tara Kellogg may not be a writer, but she is using her experience as a therapist to help create stories for children experiencing traumatic experiences like bullying and abandonment.

Kellogg has collaborated with fellow Castleton alumna Dr. Cinda Kane and children’s book author Lesley Millard Zafran to create the “Fantastic Florence It’s Not Your Fault” series. These books provide parents, caregivers, teachers, and others with a tool to start conversations about difficult topics to help children identify and process their experiences. The main character, Florence, is a magical bag who hears the thoughts of children and writes messages containing easy-to-understand strategies for overcoming the situation. Florence validates children’s feelings, reassuring them that it’s not their fault when bad things happen, and encouraging them to reach out to a trusted adult.

Kellogg holds a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Castleton and her master’s in Marriage and Family Therapy from Nova Southeastern University. She is a licensed psychotherapist with more than 25 years of clinical experience, specializing in individual and family counseling with a focus on family preservation and trauma-related stressors disorders. She is also a nationally-certified therapist for trauma focused cognitive behavioral therapy. Kellogg currently serves as director of clinical supervision for a community health center in Florida. She also works in private practices and runs a consulting business.

Kane holds a master’s degree in Education and Curriculum from Castleton, as well as a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Penn State University and a doctoral degree in Higher Education Administration from Nova Southeastern University in Florida. Kane currently teaches at Nova Southeastern University and Broward College, and is the dean of students at The College Academy at Broward College.