Parenting can be a struggle, especially parenting a child with Sotos Syndrome. In her heartrending memoir, Kramar skillfully describes championing her disabled child through his short life. Written in starkly honest prose, Searching for Spenser – A Mother’s Journey Through Grief examines the experience of loving and losing a child.
Margaret Rayburn Kramar is an educator and author whose memoir, Searching for Spenser, explores how she was transformed through the death of her disabled child.
A graduate of Grinnell College, she received an MA in journalism from the University of Iowa. Subsequently employed as lifestyle editor for the Denison Newspapers, her work received awards from the Iowa Press Association Better Newspaper Contest and Herbert Bayard Swopes Memorial Awards. In 2012 she received a PhD in English from the University of Kansas and taught English composition, drama and American literature. Previous to the PhD, she was employed for twenty years as a civil rights investigator by the Kansas Human Rights Commission.
Her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and print and digital publications. A chapter from Searching for Spenser captured the first place award in the Kansas Authors Club Contest.
She and her family live on a small farm in northeast Kansas where they produce organically grown fruits, vegetables and free-range eggs.
