CLASS OF 1992 | 2020 | ISSUE 2
Hopefully, by the time you read this, the lockdown that has been in effect since mid-March will be over. But who knows! I’ve hobbled around with a broken foot for most of the year, so for me, the lockdown has been well-timed. I hope you all have fared well during these difficult times.
In any case, the lockdown doesn’t stop news, so here we go!
Eric Leach-Rodriguez and his husband are among the many New Yorkers who stayed in the city to shelter in place. As Eric notes, it was some comfort to have 20 years as a nurse practitioner in HIV/AIDS before facing the current pandemic. Also in the city, Grant Brenner hunkered down in lower Manhattan, continuing as a psychiatrist running a large practice and doing nonprofit disaster mental health.
Darcy Dennett spent some time down in New York City for 60 Minutes Australia on the front lines in the fight against COVID-19 but then retreated two hours north in Connecticut, editing in the country. She and her husband, Paul, a lawyer for the MTA, are preparing to return to New York as soon as they can.
Lisa Turner Laing released her third novel, Love Me Not, under the pen name Lisa McLuckie. Rick Barot’s fourth book of poems, The Galleons, was published by Milkweed Editions. He won the Shelley Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America. He directs the MFA program in creative writing at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Wash.
Kevin Prufer is writing books and teaching in the graduate creative writing program at the University of Houston. For the last 10 years, he has also been directing a literary-archaeological project called The Unsung Masters Series, a book series that discovers, considers, and reprints the work of great lost writers of the past (unsungmasters.org).
Ruthbea Yesner lives in Brookline and is the VP of Government, Education and Smart Cities research and consulting. Also in the greater Boston area, Zoe Singer Fishman is practicing primary care pediatrics with Charles River Pediatrics in Natick, Mass., living in Newton with her husband, Craig Fishman, and their two sons Sam (13) and Jacob (17). Jacob will head to D.C. in the fall to be a freshman at American University.
Also on the college track, Karen Cacase Flynn and Mike Flynn ’93 are planning to send their daughter, Sophia, to start at Wesleyan in the fall.
Stefanie Trice Gill runs IntWork, a diversity recruitment agency she founded that provides engineering, tech, and executive search. She’s in Portland, Maine, sheltering in place with her husband, Mark, their 10-year-old son, and her 80-year-old-mother.
On the front lines of the current crisis, Jacky Jennings is an infectious disease epidemiologist in the throes of COVID-19 research, including launching a seroprevalence study in Baltimore City, Md., to measure the true burden of disease as well as the social and economic impacts of the crisis.
Abigail Saguy is sheltering at home in West Los Angeles with her husband, Dotan, and their kids Claire, 18, and Jonah, 15. During the pandemic, she has become a Zoom pro: teaching via Zoom, giving Zoom seminars, Zoom writing sessions, Zoom faculty meetings, Zoom cooking classes, and Zoom cocktail hours. Just before we all went into lockdown, she published a new book, Come Out, Come Out, Whoever You Are (Oxford, 2020).
In the last notes, there was mention of a book Richard Deitrich co-edited. In early February, an accompanying exhibit opened at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, called A Collector’s Vision: Highlights from the Dietrich American Foundation.
For those of you looking for entertainment, our classmates are happy to help! Tim Ellis is doing a comedy and music show, Rock Soft with Tim Ellis, every other Friday at 8 a.m. live on Facebook Live. And Susan Kleinman’s improv group, Brownies for Everyone, is doing a free show every Saturday (see improvmarin.com). When not doing shows, she is busy helping her nonprofit clients raise money and distribute cash assistance and food to individuals and families in crisis.
And though it seems like a lifetime ago, some of our classmates had exciting travels to report. In December 2019, William Kim attended the Nobel Prize Ceremony (Stockholm, Sweden) in honor of his post-doc mentor, Dr. William Kaelin, who shared the Nobel Prize in Medicine or Physiology. A small part of Bill’s post-doctoral research contributed to this finding, so he was especially excited. And he got to wear “white tie” (I can vouch for it—I’ve seen photo evidence).
Finally, on a sad note, I am sorry to report that our classmate Kristian Dahl passed away on Feb. 10.
That’s all the notes for now. Please keep Paul and me updated with your news!
Adam Berinsky | berinsky@mit.edu
Paul Coviello | coviellop01@alum.darden.edu