An evening with Penny Guisinger
Shift: A Memoir of Identity and Other Illusions

Blue Hill Public Library
5 Parker Point Road
Blue Hill, Maine 04614

Penny Guisinger was not always attracted to women. In Shift she recounts formative relationships with women and men, including the marriage that produced her two children and ultimately ended in part due to her affair with her now-wife. Beginning her story as straight and ending as queer, she struggles to make sense of how her identity changed so profoundly while leaving her feeling like the same person she’s always been. While covering pivotal periods of her life, including previous relationships and raising her children across the chasm of divorce, Guisinger reaches for quantum physics, music theory, planetary harmonics, palmistry, and more to interrogate her experiences. This personal story plays out against the backdrop of the national debate on same-sex marriage, in rural, easternmost Maine, where Guisinger watched her neighbors vote against the validity of her family.

Shift examines sexual and romantic fluidity while wrestling with the ways past and present mingle rather than staying in linear narratives. Under scrutiny, Guisinger’s sense of her own identity becomes like a Mobius strip or Penrose triangle—an optical illusion that challenges the dimensions and possibilities of the world.

Penny Guisinger is the author of Postcards from Here. Her work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Guernica, River Teeth, The Rumpus, and Solstice Literary Magazine and has won numerous honors, including three notable designations from Best American Essays, a Maine Literary Award, and a Pushcart Prize nomination. She lives at the easternmost tip of Maine with her wife, two teenagers, and a slowly increasing number of dogs.