Lynne Lerych was born and raised in Michigan. She graduated with a master’s degree in creative writing from Western Michigan University. Lynne then moved to China where she met and married Jacek. Twenty-four years ago they moved from Michigan to Aberdeen where Jacek was employed at Grays Harbor College as a foreign language teacher. Lynne started teaching part-time and has since become a full-time English professor, creative writing instructor and chair of the Humanities Department. She has a genuine desire to see the arts in Grays Harbor expand and become exceptional. She is also the chairperson for the creative arts for Grays Harbor College and the Bishop Center.

     I love this community and it is my passion to help drive creativity and the arts in this area. One of the things I love about the Harbor is that it is sort of an innocent place. Not that it is Pleasantville. What I mean by that is it is fresh and green and unspoiled by competing institutions. People here don’t feel burdened by the weight of huge institutions that pretend to be powerful and outwardly significant, and as a result of that I feel the college has a very important role to play in the community.

     The college feels like the place on the Harbor that is sort of willing to take up the mantel of being responsible for civic and cultural happenings. I identify really strongly with the college on that level. I feel like that is a huge part of what I do, which means it is also a huge part of who I am. So I’m up to my eyeballs in not just teaching, which I love. I cannot remember the last time I taught just a full load of courses. I teach a lot of overload courses. I teach a lot. I probably like it more than the students do, but that’s okay. I get that, but the teaching is really just part of it. I play in the symphony; I write, direct and occasionally act in plays. I have been known to be roped into doing other activities with other groups participating in civic activities.

     We are qualified to go someplace where they do have these big, cumbersome institutional things. I like being in a place where there is a lot of freedom to decide what the cultural life of the community is going to be. If you are in a bigger environment, a larger city, a big university or a state agency, you curtsey to their customs. Being in a large city I would have to decide what I want to be when I grow up – I’d have to pick.

     Here, I can do more than teach freshman composition. I love teaching freshman composition, but my background is in playwriting. I started showing people that I can teach creative writing since I have a master’s in creative writing. I do theater, direct plays, and teach Shakespeare. I just started creating a nest that I can sort of live in, instead of settling on the nest that was already here. I kind of made my own. Students ask us why we are here. You could be in so many cool places in the world. I have seen many of them. It’s relatively inexpensive to live here and only an hour and a half drive to the airport.

     We have actually created several families since we have been here because my real biological family is in Michigan. Our first family here consisted of the people who took care of our young son for a few hours after school, hanging out together with them and doing holiday things together, pretending we were family. We started to really develop relationships with colleagues here at the college and some of those have been really consistent. We have some friends here at the college who were here when we got here and we have been friends ever since with these colleagues. We have traditions on campus and I have had more holiday dinners with them than with my own family.

     I don’t want a legacy. I have to think about why I hate that question so much. No offense – it wasn’t a bad question. [I want to be an uplifting, building person] and I don’t think that I always succeed. I know that I don’t always succeed. Legacy scares me. It feels really final and secondly, it’s that big institutional thing again. I like what I am doing while I am doing it, and I don’t care much about what happens at the other end. Two examples for you are this book [a college level English textbook she wrote]. I have loved every minute that I have put into writing, revising and editing this book. I think it’s very cool that a publisher is very interested in publishing it. If I had to choose between writing this book and getting money or recognition for writing a book, I would choose writing the book because it’s the writing that is the fun thing. Don’t get me wrong – I’m not like Mother Teresa and don’t want to be paid for my work, but I did not write the book hoping to be paid. I never considered anyone would pay us.

     I do a lot of writing for theater and I like directing, but I love writing. Writing a play is just it for me. I think there is nothing better, nothing better on the planet than writing a play. When a play of mine is produced, you would think my favorite moment would be the applause at the end of the performance and it’s not – rehearsal is what I like. I go to every rehearsal. I adore rehearsal. It gives me a chance to improve the script. It gives me a chance to see the incredible generosity of actors who give up weeks and months of their lives to become these characters I created for the benefit of an audience. It’s kind of humbling in a way, and so circling back around to this legacy thing, I think the reason this question is really hard for me is because it’s really about the journey. It isn’t so much about the destination. If I had to pick one simple declarative sentence that I would want to hear people say about me it would be, “she makes people think.” Well, you cannot make people think, but you can be made to think, which is a different thing. You have to be open to it. Thinking is good. I like it. [It hurts sometimes] Yes, that’s OK. Lots of things hurt and they’re still OK.

     Sharing what you know, sharing what you’re good at, helping other people know things so that they are excited about that and if they stay around, that’s awesome. But it’s also cool if they take that knowledge with them and go away.

~Interviewed & transcribed
by Timothy Bartley