MIDDLBURY — Richard Hawley will read from and sign “On My Way Out,” on Friday, May 10, from 5-6:30 p.m. at the Vermont Book Shop. This book is an intimate account by the author of “The Headmaster’s Papers,” the recent “The Three Lives of Jonathan Force,” the widely reviewed “Boys Will Be Men,” and a dozen books of imaginative literature and essays on educational theory.
“On My Way Out” is totally new territory for Hawley. It is an astonishing, candid memoir. Without per se being a day book, it opens a door into his personal life, one riven by love and pervaded by a deep, instinctive ethical sense. Rich with portraits of teachers, writers, musicians, artists, and ordinary people, this self-disclosure presents in human complexity the life of an educator, thinker, and creator.
Hawley attended Middlebury College and has a Ph.D. in political philosophy from Case Western Reserve University. The founding president of the International Boys Schools Coalition, he retired as headmaster of the University School in Cleveland in 2005 and has published more than twenty books. His essays, articles and poems have appeared in “The Atlantic Monthly,” The New York Times, “American Film,” “Commonweal,” “America,” “Short Story America,” “Orion,” “The New England Journal of Medicine,” and The Christian Science Monitor.
For ten years he taught at the Bread Loaf Writers Conference. He has lectured extensively and is married to Mary Hawley, a painter and fabric artist. They live in Ripton, Vermont.