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About Marina

Marina Evelyn Keegan was born on October 25, 1989 in Wayland, Massachusetts to her parents, Kevin and Tracy Keegan. She grew up in Wayland, and she attended Buckingham Browne and Nichols in Cambridge, MA. She then attended Yale University, where she pursued her passion for English and was active in all sorts of extra-curricular activities, including Yale's daily newspaper. She graduated on May 21, 2012, and was expected to start a job at The New Yorker following graduation. She died five days later.

 

Marina was riding in a car on her way home to see her father for his birthday in Cape Cod. Her boyfriend, Michael Gocksch, was driving the vehicle. The vehicle rolled after he allegedly fell asleep at the wheel, and Marina was pronounced dead on the scene. She was twenty-two years old.

 

Marina was an award-winning author, journalist, playwright, poet, actress, and activist. In her twenty-two years of life, she accomplished more than I could ever dream of. Her nonfiction has been published in the New York Times; her fiction in the New Yorker and NPR; she even wrote a musical called Independents wchich is a New York Times Critics' Pick. Her final essay in the Yale Daily News, titled "The Opposite of Loneliness", became an instant global sensation.

 

Her parents write this on her website:

Throughout these many projects, Marina lived her life with passion and conviction, treating every day as an opportunity. She sang, played guitar, painted, rallied for Democratic causes, and, most of all, spent time with those she loved. She expressed her strong individual style in every aspect of her life, from what she wrote to what she wore (short skirts, lace-up boots, patterned tights, bracelets, rings, blazingly bright pea coats). She was a daughter, sister, friend, significant other, leader, activist, athlete, and actress, and she used all of her experiences to engage, inspire, and challenge others. She could turn a phrase, make you laugh, make you cry. Her words could make you want to shake your fist and march with her to save the whales, support the Dream Act, stand up for same-sex marriage, and elect the next president. Everyone who met her seemed to carry away a story. As a young graduate of her high school put it, “She turned a lot of people into who they are.”

 

Marina’s death became a call to life for the millions who have read her words. “Let’s make something happen to this world,” she wrote. Her readers have taken up her challenge by making changes in their own lives as well as the lives of others.

 

The book, The Opposite of Loneliness, is a complilation of her pieces from her time at Yale. The book is named after her famous graduation essay and features an introduction by the best-selling American author Anne Fadiman, who was one of Keegan's professors at Yale. It serves as both her memoir and her legacy after her death.

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