Kennedy, Michelle

PERSONAL: Born in Baltimore, MD; married; husband's name John; children: five. Education: Attended American University.

ADDRESSES: Agent—Ami Greko, Penguin Group, c/o Viking Publicity, 375 Hudson St., New York, NY 10014. E-mail—misha@mishakennedy.com

CAREER: Writer, journalist, and columnist. Green Bay News-Chronicle, Green Bay, WI, reporter and humor columnist. Worked variously as a waitress, bartender, farmer, sled-dog musher, bread-baker, nursing assistant, U.S. Senate page, restaurant owner, and as a tour guide for Ben and Jerry's ice cream company.

AWARDS, HONORS: Pushcart Prize nomination, for work in Brain, Child magazine; Reader's Choice Award, Elle magazine, and Borders Original Voices selection, both 2005, both for Without a Net.

WRITINGS:

It Worked for Me—1,001 Real-Life Pregnancy Tips, Barron's Educational Series (Hauppauge, NY), 2004.

Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless in America: My Story, Viking (New York, NY), 2005.

Contributor to periodicals, including Family Circle, New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, Brain, Child, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Green Bay Press Gazette, Fox Cities Newspaper, and Herald of Randolph, and to online publications Mothers Movement and Salon.com. Author of syndicated column "Life Happens."

"LAST STRAW STRATEGIES" SERIES

Crying, Barron's (Hauppauge, NY), 2003.

Eating, Barron's (Hauppauge, NY), 2003.

Sleeping, Barron's (Hauppauge, NY), 2003.

Tantrums, Barron's (Hauppauge, NY), 2003.

Jealousy, Barron's (Happauge, NY), 2004.

Manners, Barron's (Hauppauge, NY), 2004.

Staying Dry: 99 Tips to Bring You Back from the End of Your Rope, Barron's (Hauppauge, NY), 2004.

Letting Go: Giving up Those Bottles, Blankies, Pacifiers, and So On, Barron's Educational Series (Hauppauge, NY), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Journalist, columnist, and book author Michelle Kennedy, once a college student with a bright future and then a suburban homemaker, never expected that she would one day find herself and her three children living in their car along the beaches of the coast of Maine, homeless and struggling just to survive. In Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless in America: My Story Kennedy describes her deteriorating family situation and the missteps and the bad judgment that led her to live the reality of a worst-case scenario.

"What began as an experiment in voluntary simplicity and a move to the far north of Maine, quickly became a nightmare for me and three of my children," Kennedy stated in an article published on the Mothers Movement Web site. Seemingly on a whim, Kennedy's then-husband, Tom, decided to move the family from suburban Maryland to a primitive cabin—little more than a shack—in northern Maine. Determined to make the best of the situation and support her husband, Kennedy went along with the plan despite the hardships. She started a sled dog team and worked in husky rescue, eventually learning to enjoy a simpler life. However, increasing irresponsibility on her husband's part began to erode the family's cohesion. Kennedy earned money as a bartender in a local club, while her husband became less and less interested in making a living, finally deciding that he did not want a job at all. The final blow came when their three-year-old daughter was attacked and mauled by one of the sled dogs while Kennedy was at work; her husband was supposed to have been supervising the children at the time. When Tom chose to keep the dogs, a decision Kennedy perceived as favoring the animals over the children, she packed her three kids and their belongings into her Subaru station wagon and left.

Over the next three months, Kennedy and her children had no other home but their car. They slept parked in campgrounds and along the beach, subsisting on ramen noodles, showering at truck stops, and doing their best to look like tourists rather than homeless people. Kennedy worked as a waitress but was not able to put together enough money for an apartment, and childcare costs drained her meager earnings. Often, her children slept in the car while she worked, helpful cooks keeping a watchful eye on the Subaru through the kitchen windows. Eventually, she was able to put aside enough to rent a small apartment and rise above her diminished circumstances.

"Many of the details about the family's day-to-day survival are compelling, but it's hard to muster much sympathy for Kennedy," commented Jennifer Gonnerman in Mother Jones, noting that the author did have parents that she could have called for assistance, but declined to do so. She was also tragically unaware of social assistance programs that could have helped her out of her desperate situation. A Publishers Weekly critic observed that Kennedy's articulateness, intelligence, and resourcefulness left little doubt that she would overcome her troubles. However, the same critic observed that "once readers learn the details, the story of Kennedy's downfall goes from being unlikely to horribly plausible." The "vivid account of her months of homelessness makes a lively read," remarked Entertainment Weekly contributor Jennifer Reese. "Kennedy's perseverance in saving money and finally finding a home for her family is impressive," Gonnerman stated.

Kennedy is also the author of parenting guides known as the "Last Straw Strategies" series. As the mother of five children herself, she has seen firsthand how strategies and recommendations offered by child-care experts are sometimes ineffective. In the "Last Straw Strategies" books, Kennedy offers practical, time-tested solutions to a variety of child-rearing dilemmas.

Among these parenting guides is Letting Go: Giving up Those Bottles, Blankies, Pacifiers, and So On, which provides advice for parents who seek to help their children end their attachments to blankets, bottles, toys, and other unneeded objects that provide security or comfort. Kennedy suggests allowing children an appropriate degree of freedom and autonomy to show them that independence does not require support from blankets or bottles. Other guides include Jealousy, which offers almost a hundred tips on handling strained relations between children and their siblings; and Sleeping, which describes sleep habits of babies and young children, plus includes strategies for parents to use when toddlers and preschool children resist clocking out at bedtime. Tantrums provides harried parents useful solutions to end tantrums and help children gain control over their anger. Kennedy also examines more sophisticated child-raising issues in Manners, which suggests that teaching children manners and social interaction skills should begin no later than age eighteen months. Techniques are presented to teach children to share, to control temper outbursts, and to avoid fighting.

Kennedy told CA: "I have always been interested in writing. When I was in high school I wrote a lot in a journal as well as a lot of really bad poetry that I thought was brilliant. I also had visions of being a rock star and tried hard to put my bad poetry to music. As I got older, I wanted to write professionally, but didn't know how—or even what to write about. Having quit college, I lacked a lot of basic structure and style information. The Internet helped me greatly and after a while I learned how to write columns and articles, which eventually led to my first position at a local daily newspaper.

"My children certainly influence my work, probably more than anything else. But I am influenced by all sorts of things—people I meet, situations I find myself in. There isn't any one author who has influenced me. I love all sorts of writing—from literary fiction to more niche genre novels. I have always loved nonfiction and can find myself just as engrossed in a how-to book as the latest bestseller.

"The hardest thing for me is actually putting my hands on the keyboard and typing. I am a huge procrastinator. One of my favorite quotes is from author David Rakoff who said, 'I hate writing, but I love having written.' That's how I feel a lot of the time. Mostly though, I have to find that beginning scene and it has to ring true. If I can't put myself in the scene, then I can't write it. It's a lot like watching a movie in your head and then just writing it down.

"The most surprising thing for me is that some people are bent on hating what you write. I haven't had many negative reviews, but the few I've had have been vehement. When I don't like a book, I just set it aside and move on—but there are some people who really need you to know how much they hate what you've written. I was quite shocked by that.

"Some books just stay with me and I can't seem to shake them. Gary Paulsen's Winterdance was like that for me. I must have read it six or seven times before I finally said enough. But of all the books I've read, I think East of Eden by John Steinbeck is probably my favorite. It just grabbed me and wouldn't let go—it's rare that I'm so engrossed in a story and awed by the writing all at the same time.

"My biggest hope is that people will come away from a book like Without a Net a little less judgmental. We are such a judgmental society. Everyone claims to have the moral high ground and if I've learned anything in my life it's that people make mistakes and we just have to let them move on from those mistakes. Further, we have to let them make them. Life throws amazingly difficult choices our way. Sometimes we don't recognize the impact those choices will have until it's too late to do anything about them. But we all have the right to make those choices and we have to acknowledge everyone else's right to do the same."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, January 1, 2005, Deborah Donovan, review of Without a Net: Middle Class and Homeless in America: My Story, p. 790.

Entertainment Weekly, February 25, 2005, Jennifer Reese, review of Without a Net, p. 107.

Kirkus Reviews, December 15, 2004, review of Without a Net, p. 1183.

Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, February 5, 2005, Laura Velicer, "Life in Car Shows Homelessness Can Happen to Anyone," review of Without a Net.

Mother Jones, March-April, 2005, Jennifer Gonnerman, review of Without a Net, p. 84.

New York Times, February 27, 2005, Sarah Wildman, "Mobile Home," review of Without a Net.

Publishers Weekly, October 18, 2004, review of Without a Net, p. 54.

San Diego Union-Tribune, February 27, 2005, Jane Clifford, "Lost in America," review of Without a Net.

ONLINE

Michelle Kennedy Home Page, http://www.mishakennedy.com (August 18, 2005).

Mothers Movement Online, http://www.mothersmovement.org/ (September 15, 2005), Michelle Kennedy, "The Face of Homelessness."