Humanities Alumni Spotlight:

Life of a Wordsmith

Gretchen Hirsch (B.A. English) has worn many hats during her still-evolving career, and they have all been a terrific fit. She is the author of Womanhours: A 21-Day Time Management Plan that Works (1983); Talking Your Way to the Top: Business English that Works (2006); and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Difficult Conversations (2007). She is co-author, with Jay Wilkinson, of Bud Wilkinson: An Intimate Portrait of an American Legend (1994); and co-author, with Carol Strip Whitney, of Helping Gifted Children Soar: A Practical Guide for Parents and Teachers (2000) and A Love for Learning: Motivation and the Gifted Child (2007).

Currently a writer for Ohio Wesleyan University’s Office of University Communications, Hirsch is also president of Midwest Book Doctors, which provides editorial services for writers who are preparing manuscripts for submission to agents or editors. "I’m interested in helping others make their publishing projects better. Book doctoring is a really interesting dynamic!" Visit her blog to learn more about her love of words and her work.

Corporate communications have been a part of Hirsch’s career as well; she is the former president of the Stevens/St. John Company and vice president of marketing for Doctors Hospital. She is a founding member of the Elizabeth Blackwell Center at Riverside Methodist Hospitals, and she is also a founding member and first president of the Humanities Alumni Society.

"The humanities," says Hirsch, "inform every aspect of what I do and how I live. The humanities challenge you to question, know more, dig deeper, see what others have to say, test ideas, accept or reject them, and think for yourself. I can’t imagine my life narrowly construed."

English Professor Albert Kuhn, Hirsch recalls, "stands head and shoulders above any teacher I had. He is the embodiment of the gentleman-scholar and at the same time demanded a great deal from me. He taught me to look at all works of literature in the context of history, economics, geography, and almost any other viewpoint you could mention."

Hirsch later came to know the late David Citino: "I keep one of his poems in a frame on my desk. It reminds me to try to emulate his kindness, acceptance, and concern for the words. Lee Abbott is another talented-beyond-words writer who is also a warm, kind human being. And there are so many others. Ohio State has an English department that most other schools can only imagine!" Hirsch is certainly one of its most outstanding alumni.