Power Notes: Leadership by Analogy

by Elizabeth Rollins Epperly

Elizabeth Rollins Epperly recounts her experience of leadership as the president of the University of Prince Edward Island in this beautifully written creative memoir—a book that is both funny and moving. When she became president of UPEI in 1995, Epperly began to reshape the university into a more vibrant, forward-looking and inclusive institution. Her tenure was a success, but she met many obstacles along the way. Epperly’s narrative considers analogies of leadership, particularly her own past experiences, as ways of understanding the challenges she faced as president. She also draws insight from the 2500-year-old meditations of Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, a search for the middle path between contending forces. Her account of the kinds of people who often oppose change, and her mindful use of Lao Tzu to bring resolution, makes for nothing short of mesmerizing reading. Known for her profound and sensitive literary readings, Epperly also has an intuitive understanding of body language and of unseen flows of energy that adds layers of fascination to the narrative. Running a large institution is challenging enough; doing so as its first female president required fortitude and insight (not to mention patience). This book will interest those contemplating power and authority in their own lives. If you have ever signed a contract or worked against behind-the-scenes politics, Power Notes may help you to think about analogies of leadership, and positions of power, in new ways.

Genres: Leadership

152 pages, Paperback

Published April 21, 2017

About the author

Elizabeth Rollins Epperly is a writer, professor, and administrator.

She was born in 1951 on her mother’s birthday in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. Her parents were passionate readers and read aloud for years to their children. A fascination with L.M. Montgomery’s writing led her to Prince Edward Island in Canada, where she became in 1969 the first student to register at the newly amalgamated University of Prince Edward Island.

She graduated with degrees in English literature (B.A., UPEI; M.A., Dalhousie University; Ph.D., University of London in England), specializing in 19th Century British novels and poetry. She taught at Memorial University of Newfoundland and UPEI. At UPEI, she founded the L.M. Montgomery Institute, served as UPEI’s first woman president, and became Professor Emerita of English.

She published two books on Anthony Trollope before daring, in 1992, to publish The Fragrance of Sweet-Grass, the first full-length critical study of all Montgomery’s novels. Never out of print, it was reissued with a new preface in 2014. The biennial international L. M. Montgomery Institute conferences, which she began in 1994, are credited with anchoring Montgomery studies.

In addition to dozens of essays and book chapters, she has published books on Montgomery’s photography, scrapbooks, letters, and Canadian context. She has served as curator for real-time and virtual exhibitions and has pursued Montgomery research in Sweden, Japan, Spain, Scotland, and China as well as in the US and Canada.

Power Notes, a creative non-fiction narrative describing her university presidency (to be published in 2017), is an invitation to consider power and story in new ways.