Hi, I’m Addie, a Missouri native, who left behind a comfortable job near my hometown to embark on an adventurous teaching career. At twenty-five years old, I set off for Dubai, United Arab Emirates to soul search or teach–or somewhere in between.
Like many people, I was trained to believe in the power of the college-job-marriage-kids structure and live happily ever after. Not once did I think society’s definition of success would leave me feeling unstimulated, unfulfilled, and unhappy. Back in 2018, I took a hiatus from my desk job career and spent a year traveling in the Middle East and then in China and experienced the empowerment of solo travel for the first time. I decided to live by a simple rule: to choose curiosity over fear. Living beyond familiar has lead to a more enriching life!
Where is she now?
I was living in Dalian, China and teaching English Composition at Liaoning Normal University-Missouri State University– until COVID-19 happened. Now, I’m isolating at home in Missouri.
Educational Background
With a master’s in Professional Writing from Southeast Missouri State University, I have devoted over five years to teaching in higher education, including my position as the former Writing Lab Coordinator at Mineral Area College.
I continue to study theories of composition and rhetoric pedagogies, but my primary area–the one which has captured my heart–is creative nonfiction, specifically travel memoir and neo-confessionalism, which emphasizes the idea that grief memoir is the latest literary phenomenon of surrendering one’s private life in a “tell-all” writing style. The sharing of loss, pain, and desperation is a shock art that I find healing, particularly when using travel to help alleviate the ache.
I’m also a featured author and poet in the online magazine, Literary Juice. In this Q&A, I describe how I summon my inspiration to write.
On a personal note…
I’m an avid kayaker, hiker, and tea drinker. When I’m not teaching, I’m creating traveling tales in the form of my latest blog posts or visual storytelling with my amateur GoPro vlogs via my YouTube channel–which I update, just not as often as I like.
Find me on LinkedIn.
Addie Scoggin 