About Beverly Burch
Beverly Burch writes fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Her work has won the John Ciardi Prize, the Gival Poetry Prize and Lambda Literary Award and received several Pushcart nominations. She was a finalist for the Audre Lorde and the Housatonic Awards.
Essays on rethinking the connections between literature, politics, culture and personal life can be found on her Substack, Rethinking…(Almost) Everything.
Her writing draws on Southern roots, California culture, and the unconscious life. She grew up in Atlanta and has lived many years in Oakland, CA with her wife. Also a therapist, she had a private practice in Berkeley, CA for over 40 years until she closed it to allow more time for writing.
Personal thoughts about writing:
I’ve spent my life working the gaps between the conscious and unconscious, both as a writer and a therapist. I always loved words for their music, their meaning, and the way they point to places language doesn’t easily go.
Like therapy, writing is a personal exploration. One of my favorite thoughts (about revision, social change, personal evolution, whatever), paraphrased from a Buddhist teaching, is “Why is the road to change so long?” asked a follower. The master replied, “Because it has to go through you.”
Writing starts with a line, a memory, a scent, a tree, a political event, anything that gets going.