Last week, we described Mary Jane Nealon as a “blessed guide.” She is that, and she goes where few others dare. Today she takes us to a world where the terrible is quotidian and shows us that even there, tragedy and beauty do break through.
Printed with the permission of the author.
Mary Jane Nealon, RN, MFA, is a poet and nonfiction writer living in Missoula, Montana. She has been the recipient of a number of fellowships, including the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts ,and the Amy Lowell Poetry Traveling Scholarship. Her memoir, Beautiful Unbroken: One Nurse’s Life won the Bakeless Literary Prize and was published by Graywolf Press in 2011. Four Way Books has published Nealon’s Rogue Apostle and Immaculate Fuel. She has served as the Director of Integration at Partnership Health Center in Missoula since 2006.
