A Celebration of Books,
Writers & LIterary Excellence

Save the Date

Gaithersburg
Book Festival

May 17, 2025

10am – 6pm

Bohrer Park

< Back to Authors List
Non-Fiction

Megan Doney

Latest Title: Unarmed: An American Educator's Memoir
Unarmed by Megan Doney
Genre: non-fiction
Author: Megan Doney
Unarmed: An American Educator's Memoir
Unarmed by Megan Doney

After surviving a school shooting, English professor Megan Doney was traumatized and adrift. Rather than hardening her heart and life, she wrote Unarmed: An American Educator’s Memoir. An insightful response to American gun violence and illusions of public and private safety, this memoir is about how to live with an open heart, alive to luck, learning, and love.

This short, literary memoir is a personal response to a school shooting at New River Community College in Christiansburg, Virginia. Even more so, Unarmed: An American Educator’s Memoir is a must-read for educators at all levels, for college students, for parents, and for all of us who think deeply and widely about American society.

Winner of the 2024 Nonfiction Prize from the Washington Writers’ Publishing House.

About Megan Doney

Megan Doney is a writer and English professor in Virginia. Her work has been published in Ilanot Review, New Limestone Review, Rappahannock Review, Creative Nonfiction, Earth & Altar and Inside Higher Ed, as well as in the anthologies “Allegheny” and “If I Don’t Make It, I Love You: Survivors in the Aftermath of School Shootings.” Her essay, “The Wolf and the Dog,” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She was a Fulbright scholar in South Africa in 2007, and returned there in 2015 to study reconciliation and violence. Megan earned an M.F.A. from Lesley University. She will be presenting “Unarmed: An American Educator’s Memoir.”

Instagram: @meganlee924

Author Website:

https://www.megandoney.com/