#71 Sean Lovelace: Running, Reading, Writing

Sean Lovelace was born in a clinic, not a hospital, which may explain why he later became a nurse and worked in a hospital. His biological father left when he was 1 year old and his mother was going to put him up for adoption. He didn’t know this then, but he felt abandoned, angry. Luckily, his grandfather adopted him and his uncle became his best friend. Then his mom remarried and Sean moved back in with his mother and his step-dad, who was great. The whole family would run together and read together. He often saw his parents reading and he thought that this was what he was supposed to do too. He also used to read the encyclopedia cover to cover until he found something interesting to make or do. Despite this, many of his childhood memories are of pain—hitting himself with a bolo, impaling himself on a tomato stake, that kind of thing. He went to the best schools, but was a middle class kid, so he overcompensated by writing hyperbolic stories about his classmates. When he was 14 years old, his dad challenged him to read War and Peace, which he did, but Sean didn’t really know how to use commas until he was 18 years old. Years passed. Sean kept running faster and faster. Running is the closest thing to religion for Sean. He can feel the earth moving through his body with each step. Sean read more and more books. He became a psychiatric nurse, which is how he met his wife--at the hospital (she wasn’t a patient). She is a therapist and Sean loves her heart and how much she gives to people. Sean loves their two kids, though he feels as if he abandoned his patients when he became a writing professor. His patients were thankful for everything that he did for them, though, and Sean is glad that he still makes a difference in people’s lives, which he does in many different ways—including when people read his stories and are somehow transformed.

[Update #1: Sean Lovelace's chapbook How Some People Like Their Eggs is now available from Rose Metal Press.]

[Update #2: Sean is now the head editor for The Broken Plate, so, you know, send him something.]