Barbara McClane

Book Talk with Barbara McClane: Blessed Not Bitter–The Barbara McClane Journey

Friday, February 24, 2023 at 4:30pm
Olin Library, Smith Reading Room, 252 Church Street, Middletown, Connecticut

FREE!

Photographer, author, and Embodying Antiracism Initiative Community Fellow Barbara McClane shines a light into her new memoir. Blessed Not Bitter: The Barbara McClane Journey is a transparent, inspiring, and hope-giving story of McClane’s life challenges, self-discovery, and finding her family after 60 years. A reception with refreshments follows the talk. Co-sponsored by Wesleyan’s Embodying Antiracism Initiative, Center for the Arts, and the Wesleyan Library.

Barbara McClane is a Connecticut-based photographer, author, visual artist, and community advocate. McClane has channeled her commitment to social justice and humanity into creating art that showcases the complexities and beauty of the human experience. She has led several projects over the course of three years. The 2023 “I Am Woman Project” is currently in production and will launch in March. She published her memoir Blessed Not Bitter: The Barbara McClane Journey in November 2022 after reconnecting with her biological family after six decades. Her work also appeared in the best-selling anthology Every Kinda Lady and Her Sisters’ Pages, 2022. She recently retired from the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services, where she dedicated herself to caring for, training, and assisting people with daily life skills. She sits on the board of the Connecticut Community for Addiction Recovery, focusing on members of her local LGBTQ+ community and people of color. McClane currently is a Community Fellow in the Embodying Antiracism Initiative at Wesleyan University. She is the recipient of several awards, including the “2021 100 Women of Color” and the “2022 Nomination for the Martin Luther King Award at Connecticut Valley Hospital.”  She was a featured author at Hartford’s Literary Integrated Trailblazers Hartford Book Festival, part of her effort to support others to tell their stories and to help others trying to locate their families. In addition, she has yet another book soon to hit shelves, a “how-to find your family” and reflection journal.

PARKING DIRECTONS AND SHUTTLE

Free parking is available in Wesleyan Lot R. Entrance to the lot is across from the fire station at 169 Cross Street (0.3 miles west of Olin Library).

Parking Lot R to Olin Library is about a six-minute walk. Cross Street becomes Church Street as you travel east.

Free Shuttle on Friday, February 24, 2023:
The Wesleyan Shuttle will run from 4pm to 4:45pm between Parking lot R and Olin Library (252 Church Street) before the talk. Shuttle will run again between Olin Library and Lot R after the talk.