Girl in a Chicken House Aspires to a Purposeful Publishing Career
The Diaper that Missed the Trash Can at O’Hare; Sex, Violence, and Videotape; Office Life from Dictaphone to Rap--These are not typical chapter titles in a book about a career in a Mennonite organization. However, Melodie Miller Davis shines a laser light on her 43-year career inside Mennonite Media now based in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Her Memoir of an Unimagined Career is a deeply personal story told by a woman who feels a nudge to write when she was a 16-year-old in a smelly chicken house and develops her writing and editing skills as she navigates the ever-changing demands of publishing. Her memoir reveals the price she paid to follow her dream: willingness to take menial assignments in the beginning, traveling with one or several young children by train, chartered bus and even by plane to attend writing conferences, and reaching beyond provincial bounds to embrace controversy in documentaries. These topics included Living in the Shadow of Suicide, Hunger No More, Finding Hope in Mental Illness, and Making Poverty Housing History. This memoir will resonate will all who wish to find meaning in their work and those who value the impact of publishing for a church agency.