Meet Barbara Epley-Shuck

Barb has been a member of the Library's Writers Group since 2011. Below (in her own words)  Barb tells us  all about her personal writing journey. Enjoy!--cja
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I have always loved stories. I remember riding the trolley car down Colfax Ave in Denver CO to the big library where my mother would check out books for me. I particularly liked the travel stories. In the evening my father would read from Hurlburts Stories of the Bible.

When we moved back to a small town in Nebraska my friend Marj, who loved books, too, and I would walk to the library and sometimes sit under the tree in front of the library to read.
Avid reading taught me writing. When my parents bought a farm , there was quiet, steady physical work and time to exercise my mind with stories. So I started to write small articles and poems which were published in the Nebraska Farmer. Later I became an editor of a column called “Meet the Teens” where I collected information about outstanding teenagers state-wide and wrote about them.
In my classes , I was always the designated writer for class activities and naturally, editor of both the school newspaper and the yearbook.

I wanted to study journalism but my father said, “no”. I took education courses in my senior year or high school, went to summer school and found myself teaching a country school, ten students, ages five to twelve and I was seventeen years old. By staying home, I earned enough money to go back to college graduating two years later with an education degree with minors in music and English.

I was teaching grade school music the next year when I met and married my husband, Jim. I was to teach in Lincoln, NE as he was going to college on his GI Bill but I got pregnant. They wouldn't let me teach then so I got a job at the University of Nebraska as a secretary. There I qualified for a scholarship so I entered the University of Nebraska Journalism school, graduating in 1961 .
I was accepted into two journalism honoraries and named Theta Sigma Phi Woman of the Year much to my surprise during my last year. I worked as a general assignment reporter and photographer for the Lincoln Evening Journal, and as a market research interviewer.

When I moved to Whitesboro, we had a two year old son and my husband's job required many hours. I did not try to find news work, but I did edit the newsletter for League of Women Voters. Then I was elected to the YWCA board during the time we started the domestic violence programs. I was doing Publicity as a volunteer and they decided to give me a small stipend to continue. I wrote news stories, appeared on TV and radio advertising the YWCA programs for ten years. Then I moved on to inner city mission work at First Presbyterian church, Utica.

I put together a book of family stories years ago and want to organize the writing and add to it as a gift to my family and the universe. I do edit a newsletter for Am. Assn of University Women, help with newspaper publicity for League of Women Voters and some recreational writing with the Whitesboro writer's group. Most of my writing is sermons as I have been a substitute preacher since 19990 for the Presbyterian churches in the area .

Mentors are anyone who writes a good story that keeps me interested and engaged.
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You can read some of  Barb's stories by clicking on these links:

http://dplmondaywriters.blogspot.com/search/label/Barbara%20Epley%20Shuck

http://whitesboronywriters.blogspot.com/p/3-stories-by-barbara-epley-shuck.html