Moral Treatment with Stephanie Carpenter and Thomas C. Foster

Join us in welcoming authors Stephanie Carpenter and Thomas C. Foster to our Okemos event studio to discuss Stephanie’s historical fiction novel, Moral Treatment.

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About the Book:

Moral Treatment is a work of literary-historical fiction set in 1889-90 at a hospital inspired by the former Northern Michigan Asylum in Traverse City. In alternating sections, the novel follows the hospital’s aging superintendent, “the doctor,” who has devoted his life to asylum medicine, and Amy Underwood, a seventeen-year-old woman recently committed by her parents. Through their diverging and converging stories, the novel explores a transitional moment in American mental health care, raising questions of identity, vocation, and belonging.

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About the Author:

A native of Traverse City, Michigan, Stephanie Carpenter spent much of her youth exploring the then-vacant State Hospital that inspired Moral Treatment. Stephanie’s collection of stories, Missing Persons, won the Press 53 Award in Short Fiction and was published in 2017. Her work has appeared in Copper Nickel, Ecotone, The Missouri Review, Nimrod, Witness, and other journals. She holds a BA from Williams College, an MFA in Fiction from Syracuse University, and a PhD in English and Creative Writing from the University of Missouri. Formerly on the faculty at the University of Michigan-Flint, she’s currently Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Michigan Tech University.

About the Conversation Partner:

Thomas C. Foster is the author of How to Read Literature Like a Professor, How to Write Like a Writer, How to Read Nonfiction Like a Professor, and other works. He is a professor emeritus of English at the University of Michigan, Flint, where he taught classes in contemporary fiction, drama, and poetry as well as creative writing and freelance writing. He is also the author of several books on twentieth-century British and Irish literature and poetry.