Tell us about yourself.
As a child, I always carried a book wherever I went and started writing my own illustrated adventures. Ever since I took journalism back in high school, I am one with notebook and pen in hand, ready to record, thinking I will use an overheard dialogue, or description of a character, in a piece of writing.
After getting my master's degree in applied linguistics at Georgetown University, I lived for 5 years in Manhattan, teaching English at intensive language institutes at Colombia, NYU, Baruch College and others. I moved to Athens Greece in 1983 and taught at the American College of Greece for 35 years. I married, had two children, and started writing and publishing articles in various Greek publications. For the past 6 years, I've been publishing a monthly travel blog (olives and islands) mostly on Greece
Where did you grow up, and how did this influence your writing?
I grew up in Bethesda Maryland, outside Washington DC. I don't think it particularly influenced my writing, only that it cemented my resolve to go and live in the city, away from the suburbs. My 5 years living in New York City on the other hand inspired my writing a great deal in essays and short stories, which I published in Step Lively: New York City Tales of Love and Change.
What was your journey to getting published like?
In NYC, I took several writing classes and read my poetry at times at open mikes at bookstores and had a poem selected to be in the Little Magazine. Busy with work and family, I didn't write for many years but after another writing class in Athens, I sent an article to Odyssey Magazine and it was accepted. That gave me a boost and I continued publishing articles and poetry in various magazines. I got another boost when I published a story in the Athens News and it won first prize in their writing contest. After my retirement from teaching in 2018, I self-published three books: a collection of poetry and two memoirs.
What’s the best piece of feedback you’ve ever received?
for my poetry book
":It's a work of profound imagination, of past and present freely intermingling, and ranges in its references from Camus to Kerouac to Kitt, from images of grandparents younger and children older to Manhattan street corners in mental snapshots. This author speaks to me like few others."
for my NYC memoir:
"The author does a wonderful job describing the life of a young and curious person in NYC: visiting independent bookstores, eating at delis and hole-in-the-wall restaurants, going to smoky jazz bars, daytime movies at MOMA and bike-riding along the East River."
for my teaching memoir:
"This book is REMARKABLE! Sherri Moshman-Paganos brings her high school, middle school and university students to life so vividly, unsentimentally but empathically, in this tremendously detailed account of her teaching values, methods and experiences."
What advice would you give to aspiring writers?
Believe in yourself and that you have something to say that's different from anyone else. There might be a finite number of themes, but there are infinite ways of dealing with them. Develop your unique voice that's like no one else.