Kelley reading at her book launch
party at the Book Cellar in June

September is Suicide Awareness Month, and on this occasion I want to present you with the beautiful work of one of my students, Kelley Clink, author of A Different Kind of Same. She is the second of my longtime students to have her memoir published. (Gillian Marchenko’s Sun Shine Down was the first.) What could be greater for a creative writing teacher than to see what we workshopped in class appear in book format? To witness the work of a student of mine come to fruition after what ended up being almost nine years of effort?

Kelley came to my very first memoir class at StoryStudio Chicago in 2006, reeling from her brother’s suicide, the hurt of which was very fresh for her then. On and off, she stuck with the writing, working her way through her grief, trying to make sense of what had happened. Perhaps because it was such a long haul, it is extra special to now see her celebrating and promoting the result, her memoir A Different Kind of Same; it is a sister’s searing account of coming to terms with her only brother taking his life.

It was a privilege for me to interview Kelley for the Washington Independent Review of Books (please head on over to read the interview and “meet” Kelley). The book came out in June but we decided to run the interview now in honor of Suicide Awareness Month.

It seems to me that most of us have been affected by suicide in some way but it is not something we carry on our sleeves. It saddles us with guilt, despair and shame and leaves behind a shroud of mystery. Ultimately we cannot understand suicide and yet we have to try. I lost a good friend to suicide, and my questions resulted in the essay “Traces” published in the Bellevue Literary Review a few years ago.

Thanks to Kelley, I’ve learned a good deal more about suicide. However, while suicide is front and center, for me A Different Kind of Same ended up being more a celebration of siblinghood than anything else. It reminded me that having siblings is a great gift, and having siblings you’re close to is an even greater one. It made me miss my brother and sister even more than I already do as they live so far away, and yet it made me even happier than I already am to have them in my life (I was particularly fortunate to have my sister came for a good long visit this summer).


A Different Kind of Same is not only important and stunning content-wise, Kelley’s prose is gorgeous to boot. I leave you with some phrases from A Different Kind of Same that I loved and underlined to give you a taste for her beautiful writing and unique way of seeing the world:

Xylophone rib cages. p. 2

how you never know which two seconds will weigh on your heart for a lifetime 6

a stomach rush, fast and cold, like I was trapped on an elevator and the cable had snapped 7

the blood drained from my head in a shower of tiny stars 7

Passed away. {…} as if Matt’s soul had eased out of the world on a gentle gust of wind 8

that crooked handwriting that seemed to have arrested in the fourth grade 9

They made life look easy, which might be why Matt and I were so confused when we found out it wasn’t 12

We were the only two people in the world made up of those two people, and yet we’d inherited none of their stability. 12

that you could love someone and not want to see her, say, more than once a year 14

the photographer’s flash glitters in our eyes 18

flung far by the dervish of myth 19

You can freeze a memory like that forever–but you can’t freeze a moment 21

The boundaries of age and gender that divided us during Matt’s lifetime disintegrated when he died. He is with me constantly now, the way he was in the woods of our childhood–silent, but near. A presence, a memory. Lounging patiently in my periphery. 22

the space that each of us occupied, the physical fact of our family, was a comfort 32 (road trips)

even when a message is clear, a recipient has to be willing to hear it 39

Depression, this scratchy rodent 60

anything could have happened, but only one thing did 62

in a matter of minutes I was parallel with my past 137

waited for winter to melt into spring 144