Essex County College - Adult Learning Center
Journeys Near and Far
A Collection of Memoirs, Poetry and Intrigue

   For an aspiring writer, just putting your thoughts to paper can be an achievement. Getting them published can be a game changer, in terms of building a writer’s confidence, especially for an ESOL or basic literacy student. Four of our students achieved that honor this year when their works were published in “Journeys Near and Far, A Collection of Memoirs, Poetry, and Intrigue.”  The book was edited by Judith Celestin and Ellen Ray and produced by Hard Ball Press. The writers are Essex County Consortium students, including LVA’s own Barry Batts, author of “Life is Good to Me Now,” a memoir about his tough upbringing in New York City; Beralia Briceno, who wrote about her carefree rural Honduras childhood in “My Free Life in Danli”; Fernanda Contreras, author of “A Christmas Letter,” a poetic letter to her young daughter in Colombia, from whom she is separated; and Clifford Henry, whose fictional “Confused Young Man,” tells of a family that struggles with a son’s drug problem and debt to a violent drug dealer. Last month, Clifford and Beralia joined other authors in a public reading of their work at Essex County College. Photos of the event are included here; the book is available through Amazon and hardballpress.com

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Journeys Near and Far
A Collection of Memoirs, Poetry and Intrigue