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Short Stories from a Long Life: Margreta Klassen ’68 publishes stories in a new anthology

Black-and-white photo of ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ’s 1968 commencement as Margreta Klassen walks off stage with a rolled-up diploma in hand.
Margreta Klassen ’68 walks off the stage during ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ’s fourth Commencement on June 9, 1968. Behind her, founding trustee Odell McConnell hands a graduate her diploma.
Close-up of Margreta Klassen, who has straight white hair cut in a bob and wears an orange and white top.

Margreta Klassen ’68 transferred to ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ from Chaffey Community College in 1966. Known then as Maggi Dunn, she had worked as a journalist at the Riverside Press-Enterprise and was in her 30s when she arrived at ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ. As her classmate and ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ trustee Louise Beaudette Thornton ’68 says, β€œMaggi was a ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ New Resources student before there was a ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ New Resources program,” referring to a program for students 23 years of age or older that ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ established in 1974.

A member of the charter Class of 1968 (the first four-year class to graduate from ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ, then a women’s college), Klassen took a course with the legendary folk musician Guy Carawan, ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ’s Folklorist-in-Residence at the time. She studied art with Professor Carl Hertel. Professors Lew Ellenhorn and Alfonso Ortiz inspired her interest in psychology and anthropology, and she credits Professor Esther Wagner with honing her writing skills. More than 50 years later, she still has a paper, β€œSacred Clowns of the Southwest,” that she wrote for a class she took with Ortiz.  

"Being true to ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ’s values, I have been a β€˜participant’ throughout my long life."

She went on to become an internationally recognized clinical psychologist who practiced in Newport Beach, CA, until retiring a few years ago when she turned 90.

She is also a writer. In her early 90s, she wrote three of the 20 tales collected in Twenty of Today’s Best Short Stories, an anthology of fiction and nonfiction stories. She has also written a book of poetry, and her memoir, Soul Stealing: Abuse of Intimate Power, was published by Black Rose Writing in 2017.

Today, Klassen keeps in touch with her ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ classmates as an active member of the ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ OC Book Gatheringβ€”a group of 11 alumnae from the classes of 1968 and 1969 who have been meeting to discuss books and life since the 1980s.  

β€œBeing true to ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ’s values, I have been a β€˜participant’ throughout my long life,” Klassen wrote in ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ’s Class of 1968 Lookbook.

Adapted from Short Stories from a Long Life, a ΝΓΧΣΟΘΙϊ Spotlight feature published in June 2021.