Life Stories

As an editor, Mark Kennedy allows the work of other writers to sing. He takes a wannabe wordsmith's messy piece and reshapes it with such subtlety that even a mediocre author can believe the melodious composition is her own. As a mentor, he shares long-honed craft secrets as if they were mere road directions. He teaches a rookie columnist how to hit the desirable self-deprecatory tone by likening the look of his own balding head to a skinless chicken breast. As the voice of Life Stories, he makes his audience care about his prose and his people. He pens the desperate plight of a trailer-park dweller's eviction, and cash donations come in the mail; he writes of his wife's unwitting embrace of a grocery-store stranger and readers recall similar gaffes, even as they guffaw. He describes an Alzheimer's victim with a flower on her nose and creates a poignant image of loss that comes with a curious saving levity. There's a reason Mark Kennedy wins all those awards. Just ask his supervisors, his staff or the newspaper subscribers who grab his weekly columns as if they weren't life stories, but life preservers. by Jan Galetta, Former Chattanooga Times Free Press Reporter and freelance writer