Gretchen Eberhart Cherington
Gretchen Eberhart Cherington is the author of Poetic License: A Memoir (She Writes Press). In the vein of Small Fry by Lisa Brennan Jobs and Famous Father Girl by Jamie Bernstein, Poetic License explores the life of a Pulitzer prize winning poet’s daughter: how she confronts her family’s myths and her beloved father’s betrayals while finding her voice and establishing her own legacy. It’s an extremely engaging account of growing up in an academic family that had a constant stream of famous poets and writers through their door, and the winding journey to understanding how her own father’s early childhood trauma plays out over generations.
Cherington grew up in a household that—thanks to her Pulitzer Prize–winning father, the poet Richard Eberhart—was populated by many of the most revered poets and writers of the twentieth century, from Robert Frost to James Dickey. She’s spent her adult life advising top executives in changing their companies and themselves. Her essays have been published in Crack The Spine, Bloodroot Literary Magazine, and Yankee Magazine, among other journals and newspapers, and her essay “Maine Roustabout” was nominated for a 2012 Pushcart Prize. Cherington is a leader in her community and has served on twenty boards. Passionate about her family and friends, she most enjoys spending time with them at home or in wild places around the world.
Instagram: @gretcher
Not all books are for all readers… when you start a book and you just don’t like it, how long do you read until you bail?
My most obsessive buy is books. This was especially enjoyable when I could physically browse indie bookstores and pick up some of my very best reads, carefully selected by these booksellers. It’s taken years to give myself permission to set a book down for good when only 10, 20 or 100 pages in. This has improved with age—there just are so many great books to read and not as much time left to read them! I love memoir, literary fiction and nonfiction, and really good literary thrillers, but I’m newly enjoying graphic books and taking in a lot of younger and diverse voices. I like having a lot of unread books around. That way I can prowl my shelves for the right book to fit my mood, time, and world circumstances. Sometimes, I’ll pick one up, then put it down for six months and it’s just right, then.
Vacation druthers… City or Rural destination? Why?
“Mom’s math,” as my kids call it, allows me to combine this question with “what brings you the most joy?” as they have similar answers! First, my two smart, wise, and hysterical granddaughters wherever they are who make a vacation out of every hour! But for complete relaxation: anywhere that has ocean or mountains or beautiful landscapes, especially if we can front-end that with a week in a great city. A week in Buenos Aires before three weeks of hiking through Patagonia. A week in Paris before hiking through Andalusia. A week in LA or SF ahead of national parks or great California/Arizona state park hiking. If capped with a few days at a beach, then I’m truly in heaven. I’ve traveled widely across the world for business and pleasure, but now, with things as they are, I yearn for our National Parks, snow swept back country ski trails and the quiet mystery of Penobscot Bay. Wilderness settles me, reorients me, inspires me, and if there’s a church I believe in, it’s in the wilderness.
Is there another profession you would like to try?
Becoming an author is my third and probably last profession, but if I had to do it over and could choose anything at all, I’d be a jazz musician. After years of classical training I took up jazz piano in my forties and loved it, though it was too hard for me to sustain alongside my career in consulting. Music is a tough profession, but I can’t think of anything more worthy or joyous than being in a jazz band that allows for great riffing off each other, individual moments of focus, and total collaboration. Making people sway, snap their fingers, and smile—that would be so much fun!
What’s the difference (at least for you!) between being a writer and an author? How do you shift gears between the two?
Sometimes this feels like an elitist question. If you write long hours and complete a great memoir or novel but never get it published, does that make you less worthy as an author one who was? Webster’s doesn’t require authorship to mean publication, so I try not to prioritize one over the other when it comes to my talented tribe of writing friends. But, I know I only called myself an author after I started getting published in literary magazines. One surprise of the publishing process is how out of my creative writing habits I’ve become as I approach pub day filled with marketing and publicity demands. I look forward to digging in to the next book as a writer for a couple years!
Do you have another artistic outlet in addition to your writing? Do you sew? Paint? Draw? Knit? Dance?
I’ve sewn for years, now mostly for my grandkids. My husband and I used to tear up the dance floors with swing and blues bands and in our prime felt both athletic and artistic. Now it’s harder to go out at 9 pm! (even if it felt responsible to do so!) I think gardening is artistic. I’ve been gardening for fifty years—vegetables at first, now only flower beds, mostly perennials. I’ve designed and built dozens of beds, each different, each bringing me and my friends great joy as the colors, textures, tones, heights, masses, and pop steadily unfold through our half-year season in New England. Even those plants that shine in snow add living art to our landscape. My gardens bring me solace, are meditative, changing, malleable and like life are a continual adventure that I think I can control, but can’t.
