Sonia Rita Usatch '97

Sonia Rita Usatch, is a grateful alumna of the class of 1997. She is the author of three poetry chapbooks, Noodle Kugel & Life’s Other Meichels, Living in the Rooms of Our Lives and Regarding My Son. She was a contributing author for Poetic Medicine: The Healing Art of Poem-Making. Main Street Rag has published one of her short stories, and a second story is floating somewhere in cyberspace. While on Long Island, she was invited to create and teach Healing and Madness, a course for second-year medical students at Stony Brook Medical School. This led to the paper she wrote, Making a Case for the Use of Nontraditional Courses in Educating Medical Students on Issues of Mental Illness, published in The Journal of Poetry Therapy.

In 2006, she and her late husband relocated to Fuquay-Varina, North Carolina where she was a freelance correspondent for the News and Observer’s edition of Southwest Wake News and for the NBC produced website, MyNC.com. Sonia was commissioned to write The Book of Asher: Memoirs of a Passionate Jewish Life. During a morning meditation a melody began sounding quietly from her lips. Lyrics came to her in the same manner. Along with a composer friend, The Bond was born. It is a short film about love and loss. The Bond won an award of recognition for short film in 2020 (thebondproject.com). She is passionate about the words of playwrights and has appeared on stage in New York and North Carolina. Her first play, Break A Leg! was produced at two North Carolina theaters. Currently, Sonia is finalizing her second play, Shoebox Memoirs, preparing for a second staged reading in Spring 2023.