One of Ours by Susan Williams, Ph. D.

Chris Forhan, who once taught creative writing here at Trident Technical College, is now on the faculty at Butler University in Indianapolis. Chris was on the committee that hired me, twenty years ago, and he left the college soon afterward. He went on to work in the non-residential creative writing program at Warren Wilson College, and he was the first person I ever knew who taught writing online. At the time I thought he was crazy to take on that challenge—it seemed like such a labor-intensive and impersonal way to help people learn to write. (Now, I believe that although it certainly is labor-intensive, it’s also the best way to teach creative writing).

Chris went on to earn an MFA, publish three books of poetry (Forgive Us Our Happiness; The Actual Moon, The Actual Stars; and Black Leapt In), and win several major literary awards.  He married the poet Alessandra Lynch, and they have two children.

I knew that Chris’s father had committed suicide when he was fourteen years old. Many of his later poems circle uneasily around this trauma, including all of the ones in Black Leapt In.  Chris told me once that his writing style had changed drastically as he began to zero in on his father’s death and his own reactions. He said that he found himself becoming much more direct, pushing himself to avoid dependent clauses, qualifiers, and evasions.

I could see that evolution in his poetry, which grew deeper and darker and more profound as his style grew simpler. I sort of kept in touch with Chris, who returns to Charleston now and then for readings and teaching gigs. I assumed that he was working on another book, and that it would be poetry.     

And then, last month, I was cruising the new book section at the Charleston County Library

when I spotted his name on the spine of a volume published by Simon and Schuster. I turned it over and there was a blurb from Jeanette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, one of the great memoirs of our time: “My Father Before Me is an exquisite example of the power of honesty. In this wonderful memoir, Chris Forhan shows that the best way to counter a legacy of mystery and deception is with compassion and truth.”

Chris grew up in Seattle, one of eight brothers and sisters. And My Father Before Me is all about what that experience was like and how it felt, from the popular music that formed its soundtrack to the toys and clothes and “wacky haircuts”—to borrow one of my favorite phrases from the poem “Forgive Us Our Happiness”—that were touchstones of my own suburban childhood. Though there is horror at its core, My Father Before Me is far from a grim story, not least because it is told so well, with such affectionate clarity.   

I’m proud to have known Chris back when he was a struggling young poet teaching English 101, and I’m proud to teach in the creative writing program he helped to shape here at Trident Technical College.  

 You can read one of Chris’s poems here, “What My Father Left Behind.”