Join us in a westward journey to the Irish enclaves of Butte, Montana and on to a chicken coop on Maryland’s Eastern Shore as Marybeth Shea guides us along little-known paths of Irish migration and through little understood profession of technical communications.

She describes herself as a humanist and cites her Catholic education, specifically with the Jesuits, as foundational to her worldview and her career.

She’s now a professor of English in the Professional Writing Program at the University of Maryland and a technical writer who draws on the Irish storytelling tradition to bridge the gap between scientific specialists and the rest of us.

It was Marybeth’s research for a technical writing project that took her into that chicken coop as part of her hands-on research to develop the storytelling needed to get buy-in from poultry farmers on ways to decrease their ammonia output.
 
It’s a wide-ranging conversation that adds to our understanding of the complexity of Irish immigration and the growing importance of effective technical communications.

Links

• University of Maryland Professional Writing Program
• Seamus Plug: Ethnicity and Family Therapy