Along the Beaten Track With Cathy Adams

“It feels like I've gone halfway around the world, but then I realise, I literally have gone halfway around the world,” Professor Cathy Adams said while recounting her journey from “the heart of the south” to Blagoevgrad’s sunny streets. The newest Literature and Theatre professor shared her stories of writing, teaching, and travel that taught her how to listen, take in, and understand her surroundings. 

Adams was born and raised on a farm in a rural area of Alabama, USA—a place, she believes, that had conservative tendencies. 

“I am more of a progressive thinker, perhaps. I was educated in liberal arts institutions. As I grew older, I became more ideologically separated from the culture there,” the professor said.  

Adams graduated from the University of West Georgia with a Bachelor’s degree in English with a concentration in Southern Literature. Her field of study allowed her to hone a craft she had developed an affinity for at an early age—writing.

“I have always loved to write. I wrote my first play when I was six years old. It had about seven lines of dialog in it,” Adams said

The professor has written short stories published in The Saturday Evening Post, AE: The Canadian Science Fiction Review, and many other journals around the world. Some of her stories have even been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She started by crafting fiction set in Southern American culture, but life prompted her to change things up in her latest novel. “A Body Just as Dead” saw Adams bringing a Chinese person into Southern culture—circumstances that were in reverse to her own. 

“My husband and I went to China back in 2012, and the plan was to stay there for a year and then go back to the US. We ended up staying there for 11 years,” Adams  shared.

Despite her rich background in international travel, Adams admitted to having experienced a great cultural shock during her stay in China.

“China is a place where you always feel a step removed. Foreigners, we look different, we sound different,” she said. The professor shared her thoughts about travelling and immersing oneself in foreign circumstances. She highlighted the need for self-reflection and open-mindedness, especially in interaction with people with opposing views.

“I think that’s the greatest form of love you could show to another person, for a fellow human being. Shut yourself off for a little bit and just listen and consider how they view the world and what their experience has been,” a sentiment, she expressed, that was shared by her and a fellow lecturer in AUBG professor whose presentation she attended.

In addition to travelling internationally and building her writing career, Adams found a sense of purpose in teaching as well. Her teaching experience so far includes a state school in North Carolina, a small private Christian school, and two Chinese universities. However, one of the most enriching experiences, she remarked, was her time teaching a group of young offenders in a medium security men's prison in North Carolina.

“I had trouble getting them to pay attention the first week. Finally, I said, ‘Look, if you'll pay attention in class and listen to what I have to tell you at the end of class, I'll let you teach me something about what you know,’” Adams shared. 

In exchange for teaching literature and history, she was taught how to package cocaine and how to navigate a very complex financial hierarchical system of gangs. 

“I used to make jokes after I finished teaching there. I said, ‘Well, if the teaching thing doesn't work out, I can always be a gang accountant,’” she laughed. 

Still a teacher, Adams found her way to AUBG while searching for a teaching position in a liberal arts educational institution. What caught her eye was the university’s mission statement that included the idea of promoting democracy—something she was prohibited from doing in China.

“I thought, ‘Wow, it would be so nice to be in a place where I can promote the ideas of freedom and equality for all people and peace and all these things that are supposed to be good, that, at least, I have been raised to believe,’” she shared. 

Now on campus, Adams enjoys interacting with the diverse student body that contrasts the homogenous classes she taught in China. She also finds Blagoevgrad delightful, especially the local private shops and Bachinovo park. During her free time, she researches ways to travel locally so she can learn more about Bulgaria’s rich culture and history in hope of fulfilling one of her goals—writing a novel set in the country.

“There is something about Blagoevgrad that makes it Blagoevgrad, and we see little inklings of what makes it unique. I don't yet have all the pieces together, but I think this would make a terrific setting for a really good novel,” Adams said.