Rebecca Blevins Faery

FAERY, BLEVINS, CARTER, NOWYSZ

Posted By: Sarah Fletcher (email)
Date: 6/5/2017 at 09:54:39

Rebecca Blevins Faery passed away on May 29th, 2017, in Iowa City, Iowa, due to complications
from advanced dementia. She was 76 years old.
A superb writer of insightful and lyrical essays and books, she taught expository and creative
writing at Hollins University, the University of Iowa, Mount Holyoke College and Harvard
University and ended her career as the Director of the First-Year Writing Program at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, from where she retired in 2012.
Rebecca was a life-long scholar and prolific writer focused on English, early American literature
and the art of the essay. During her more than 3 decades as a professor, she taught at four
different universities in Virginia, Iowa and Massachusetts. At each institution she brought her
love of English and the written word, a singular passion for her students, their lives and their
success. Even late in life, she retained deep friendships with former students of hers from many
years prior, which is testimony to her peerless qualities as a teacher, mentor and friend.
She graduated from William Fleming High School in Roanoke, Virginia, in 1958, and married
Henry Frederick Faery, Jr., (Fred) a West Point graduate and career officer in the United States
Army. She accompanied him to postings around the U.S., and then to a small town in southern
Germany, where she developed a life-long love of the German language and culture of Bavaria.
She continued to speak fluent German well into her later years, and kept very close with German
friends she met there in the 1960s
Rebecca spent her years following their return from Germany raising their two young children,
Annemarie and Rick, while finishing her bachelor’s degree at Mary Washington University,
which she earned in 1975. Not long thereafter, she earned her masters in English from Hollins
University in Roanoke, Virginia, where she then taught into the late 1980s.
With both of her children off at college, Rebecca returned to school herself, studying for and
earning her Ph.D from the University of Iowa’s prestigious English program. Her thesis was
ultimately published as the book Cartographies of Desire: Captivity, Race & Sex in the Shaping
of an American Nation (1999).
Rebecca was known and loved for her intelligence, elegance, and great sense of style. She was
widely travelled, a prolific reader, a connoisseur of the arts and culture, as well as of the English
language, quick with an insightful and apt quote from anyone from William Shakespeare to
James Baldwin. A fabulous and creative cook, she exposed all who had the fortune to be invited
into her kitchen to her southern roots with her lavish use of butter and cream, as well as her
biscuits and slow-cooked grits. Her friends sometimes referred to her as the “Martha Stewart of
Cambridge.”
Her homes – whether in Germany, Roanoke, Iowa City or Cambridge – were always warm and
welcoming and full of the delightful smells of home-cooked food and the sounds of music. She
played the piano beautifully and always made sure that music was filling her house: the Beatles,
Aretha Franklin, Mama Cass, the Talking Heads, as well as piano concertos and jazz.
Her parents Dorothy and Neil Blevins of Roanoke, Virginia, preceded her in death. Rebecca will
be greatly missed by her extended family: her devoted younger brother David Blevins and his
wife Gaye (Roanoke, Virginia), and their children Chip and Lauryn; former husbands, Fred
Faery (Denver, Colorado) and Bill Nowysz (Iowa City, Iowa); her beloved children Annemarie
Carter (Iowa City, Iowa), and Rick Faery and his wife Pia (New York, New York); her much loved and doted-upon grandchildren, Aaron (19) and Caroline (15) Carter (Iowa) and Amalya
(10), Kaiya (9) and Alexander (5) Faery Devitre (New York).
Her family would like to thank Legacy Gardens Memory Care, Lantern Park, and Iowa City
Hospice for the continual support and devoted care they provided Rebecca and Annemarie
during Rebecca's very brave journey.
In lieu of flowers, Rebecca’s family requests that friends share with them stories of Rebecca’s
life – and indicate their interest in helping to establish a scholarship fund in her honor – by
mailing her daughter, Annemarie Carter, 346 Ferson Avenue, Iowa City, Iowa, 52246.

Lensing Funeral & Cremation Service
 

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