When stitched together, quilts can bring to life important people and their stories. For Dawn D. Bennett-Alexander of Athens, the craft has done more than that—it has inspired creative, relevant storytelling, and a second career.
Bennett-Alexander, associate professor emeritus of employment law and legal studies at the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business, and her niece, Renée H.P. Patterson, used one of Bennett-Alexander’s many quilts as the center of and a starting point for their cozy mysteries series—each focusing on a particular aspect of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI), which has been a key component of Bennett-Alexander’s pioneering work for decades.
The first book in The Quilt Journeys Mystery Series, “The Wandering Quilt,” was released in 2022, followed by “Hidden In Plain Sight: Brian’s Quilt” in 2023. The third book, “Not All Diamonds Are Gems, Not All Stars Are In The Sky: Eden’s Quilt,” was also released in 2023, while the fourth book, “Winds We Cannot See: Nikiko’s Quilt,” is due out later this year.
Like many retirees, Bennett-Alexander—whose 33-year career at UGA ended in 2021—faced some uncertainty about her next chapter. But she says she wasn’t anxious about it. At all. While she knew would write, she never dreamed that it would be fiction. “I knew that there was something else for me and I knew the universe would make it clear what that would be,” she says. “So I didn’t mind retiring and I didn’t worry about what I was going to do because I knew that when it was time to do it, I would recognize it.”
The idea for the first book came out of a visit from her niece, who saw some of the many quilts Bennett-Alexander has made displayed on a hassock and asked about them. Bennett-Alexander says that in the years that she had been teaching DEI as part of employment law at UGA, her students often experienced moments of understanding that they wanted to pass on to friends and family members. She needed a way for a larger audience to experience that enlightenment. “When I retired I realized the books were a way to be able to do that,” says Bennett-Alexander, who is originally from Washington, D.C. “To be able to get that message out to a broader audience. . . . I knew something else was calling me.”
Patterson, who lives in Houston, Texas, says writing with her aunt—the ‘go-getter who doesn’t let any grass grow under her feet’ has been a way to pass on the importance of DEI, particularly at a time when it is under attack in the United States. Over the years, Patterson has sat with her aunt and listened to her stories about some of the difficult lessons that students in her classrooms have learned. Once Bennett-Alexander retired in 2021, Patterson told her aunt that people were “missing out.”
“I told her, a lot of your stories have really transformed thinking,” Patterson said, “and we need to harness this in some kind of way that brings people back into your classroom, where they feel comfortable hearing uncomfortable stories.”
