Joan Cusack Handler Ph.D.

About

Poet, memoirist, and psychologist, Joan Cusack Handler Ph.D. is the founder/publisher of CavanKerry Press Ltd, cavankerrypress a not-for-profit literary press committed to art and community. She has four published collections: Confessions of Joan the Tall, a prose memoir written in the voice of a 12-year-old Irish Catholic girl raised in the Bronx in the 1950s; GlOrious, an anthem to adolescent rebellion in adulthood; The Red Canoe: Love in Its Making the story of a marriage—underbelly and crown, and her latest, Orphans, which tells the stories of her Irish immigrant parents in three voices—her mother’s, her father’s and her own. Her widely published poems have received the Sampler Award from The Boston Review and 6 Pushcart nominations.

Books by Joan Cusack Handler Ph.D.

Recent Posts

Creative Writing & the Psyche: Words as Art Objects

A master poet freed me with one simple idea: Discard convention and explore your own impulses, he said. Invent your own art.

Creative Writing and the Psyche: Sabotaging Voice

The paradox: We write because we have something to say but fear of exposure often inhibits our message.

Creative Writing and the Psyche: The Writer's Voice

As critical as voice is to our art, few talk about it—what it is, how we "find" it, what interferes with or enhances it—this elusive thing we can’t make art without.

Creative Writing and the Psyche: Writer's Block and a Mentor

Writer’s block is terrifying. But you can grow as a writer without being destroyed emotionally.

Creative Writing and the Psyche: Envy

Envy and greed have been the most forbidden emotions I’ve battled with throughout my life.

Creative Writing and the Psyche: Conquering Self-Doubt

Learning to write was not easy until I began to see myself as an instrument — recording every thought or feeling in the language in which it arrived. My Rule:Don't erase/criticize

Creative Writing and the Psyche: Antidote to Depression

I needed to give myself over to something whole and alive — that was mine alone. Thus began my life with the possibility of poems. Therein lay my recovery.

Creative Writing and the Psyche: 2 Silences

Creative writing may be the most psychologically challenging of all the arts.

Art as a Path to Emotion

Involvement with art, one's own or another's, is emotionally and psychologically healing.

Who to Turn to When You Need to Talk

If you are one who trusts easily and quickly, consider the possibility that this may work against you rather than for you.