Alum Authors 2023

by Ann Tweedy '93

 Ann Tweedy’s A Registry of Survival is a deeply moving portrait of her fraught relationship with her mother. Tweedy’s story-poems explore the minutiae of her mother’s struggles with mental health, and Tweedy’s own attempts to find some safe balance in her relationship with her mother. In this short, but richly woven collection, Tweedy gives voice to the bitter struggles many fight quietly every day, offering a bit of solace to society's stigma of mental illness.

It’s like the words of A Registry of Survival were extracted from the heart, like clean sharp needles pulling out, but true and hard and needing to be said.  The child, Ann Tweedy, might have survived her mother’s mental illness and homelessness, but the adult daughter has to live with the legacy ever after.  This book is about the living with what comes after.