Earlier this month, DeWitt author Gloria Heffernan read from her poetry books at Doyle’s Books in Fayetteville. Her career in higher education spanning 30 years, Heffernan worked at New York University and also Le Moyne College, where she was an adjunct English professor and the director of servic e learning. She now teaches classes at the Downtown Writers Center and the Fayetteville Senior Center. Heffernan’s most recently published book is “Fused,” which came out this past April. With a painting by local artist Wendy Harris on its cover, “Fused” is about how we need each other to get by—a hopeful, motivating message that has been drowned out by the negativity and noise in the world today, Heffernan said. Though the book addresses polarization going on in the United States, the poems contained within remain reflective and optimistic, she said. “It’s focused on taking more of a look at how we need each other as humans,” Heffernan said. “We can’t make it work if we’re not working together.” That evening at Doyle’s Books, located at 225 Brooklea Drive, Heffernan also read from her book “Peregrinatio: Poems for Antarctica.” That poetry collection published in 2023 was inspired by the 2019 cruise she took to that continent, an experience she called “magnificent” and full of wonder. Yet at the same time, the trip made her realize how fragile and vulnerable Antarctica’s environment is, raising questions and concerns about whether human beings have affected it positively or if they should be leaving its land alone. Heffernan also read portions of her upcoming book “Moments of Color and Cloud,” which consists of poems about the aging process and all the beauty, challenges, joys, gifts and losses that come with it. Heffernan said that for her, poetry has been a “wonderful way of building community,” becoming a springboard for engaging conversations and numerous connections she’s fostered with others. Calling her writing of poetry a need that propels her day after day, and adding that her husband Jim is always her first set of eyes and an inspiration to her, Heffernan said the compliments people share about how her poems have personally touched them keeps her going too. One of the lessons she emphasizes in her workshops is that “writing doesn’t just happen when your fingers are moving across the keyboard—it happens when you see something that makes you stop in your tracks and you can’t forget it.” Even when there are no words put down on the page, great ideas can still be brewing only to come to the surface later on, she said. ...read more read less