Stathoplos
lisa
Stathoplos
writer ✧ actor ✧ behavior specialist ✧ educator
Advance Praise for
Chimera, A Shapeshifter's Journey
"There are certain truths I hold as self-evident: Life is messy, love is messier, and it's all over too quickly. Lisa Stathoplos knows these facts and confronts them head on in her second memoir Chimera, A Shapeshifter’s Journey. Truth is the backbone of this emotionally raw, dramatically charged reminiscence of a life lived to a rock-and-roll soundtrack. Stathoplos takes us on her journey, morphing from actor to child, from educator to parent, from lover to friend and back again. Where others might prefer to forget tragedy and heartbreak, Lisa remembers the details and makes us laugh, cry and reflect."
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Joe Sikoryak- Cartoonist, designer and filmmaker who lives in San Francisco. He's currently work on a graphic novel memoir entitled When We Were Trekkies.
"Lisa has opened wide a treasure chest of a memoir that is hugely courageous and brutally honest. She approaches mental illness and addiction head-on with the deepest of compassion that allows her to love what is. Her lion's heart steers her with the intuitive knowing of when to stay quiet—to sit in the dark with a loved one, bearing witness to the pain as she offers the steeled strength of her presence—and when to speak (or roar) for others who need her voice.
With the prose of a poet at times and the timing of the great actress she is, she brings you down into deep despair with some of these events, only to use her sense of raucous humor to bring you bubbling back up to the surface with laugh-out-loud moments.
Anyone who suffers from or has a loved one with mental illness and/or addiction may find strength and deep understanding in all that Lisa shares within the pages of this book."
Mary Lello- BS in Biology and Education. Masters degree in Acupuncture
“Chimera is an enthralling continuation of Lisa Stathoplos’s memoir Make Me. It is a deeply personal and heart-rendingly honest story of marriage, children, family relationships, and thus life. It is a book of love.
Chimera should also be read by anyone connected to schools in anyway… From writing the laws to being in the classroom. Lisa is the teacher I could have used in my high school years. The story, the words, are accompanied by Michael Crockett’s beautiful visual artistry.
Nol Putnam - Teacher, Artist, Author of Beauty in The Shadows: Wrought Iron in The Washington national Cathedral and Lines in Space, History Department Chairman, Lenox School for Boys
"Composed of carefully constructed vignettes and filled with brutal honesty and wry self-effacing humor, Chimera is just plain fun to read and succeeds in creating a protagonist the reader simply enjoys getting to know."
Tim Wheeler- Actor Sex in the City, Law and Order, Homicide: Life on the Street
"If anyone understands a soul in distress it is Lisa Stathoplos. In her gutsy new memoir Chimera, A Shapeshifter's Journey, Stathoplos pulls no punches as she captures in raw and eloquent detail the reality of depression and anxiety. A teacher who gave her at-risk students her phone number (and answered at 2 a.m.), she also navigated the system as a mother and knows this harrowing territory inside and out. Her first-hand accounts are gut-wrenching (and at times richly humorous), yet we are left uplifted and inspired as her ultimate goal is UNDERSTANDING. The vagaries of love/marriage/divorce are also bravely tackled, as Lisa intimately describes her own heartrending journey through this rocky terrain. Heart and soul, wit and warmth, ring out loud and clear from every page. Chimera is a dynamic clarion call for compassion; and delivers the message triumphantly."
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Valerie Kuhn Reid- Veteran Educator of Theatre and English and Author of One Stop West of Hinsdale
"Chimera: A Shapeshifter’s Journey, lisa Stathoplos’ companion to her marvelous coming-of-age memoir Make Me, is also a knockout. She tells the riveting tale of her struggles with adulthood as a celebrated actor in Portland, ME, as an equally gifted special ed instructor and a challenged mother of two. She tells the story in a fascinating kaleidoscopic fashion that illuminates the larger picture while bringing us to the living, breathing moment of each powerful, expertly crafted scene: there is nothing this author doesn’t invite us to feel and experience for ourselves. Every pulsing moment of pain, anguish, uplift and joy is delivered and the result is stunning. The literary work is perfectly complimented by Michael Crockett’s exquisite and intimate illustrations.
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Suzanne Bachner- Award-Winning Playwright, The Good Adoptee and Circle