Kate Hopper teaches writing online and at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis. Her just-published memoir Ready for Air: A Journey through Premature Motherhood discusses her poignant journey before and after the early delivery of her firstborn, Stella, who turns 10 today. Dear Stella, I know I’ve been talking a lot lately about how grown-up … More A letter to my daughter on her 10th birthday.
BY DORION SAGANAward-winning science writer, editor, and theorist “Every scientific idea passes through three stages,” wrote William Whewell in his 1840 Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences: First, it is ridiculed.Second, it is violently opposed or claimed to be of only minor importance.Third, it is accepted as self-evident. Other versions and variations have appeared since, with … More On star stuff, ‘Science’s Unruly Earth Mother,’ and the scientific art of empirical rebellion
BY RACHAEL HANELWriter, university administrator, former journalist In the not-so-distant past, death and life co-existed in the home. Home was where people were born, and home was where people died. Upon death, the family prepped the body for burial, carefully washing it and clothing it. The body was then laid out in the parlor, and … More ‘So few Nates, so many, many Davids’: Six Feet Under and the return of death to the home
Q&A with Leigh FondakowskiEmmy-nominated coscreenwriter for the adaptation of The Laramie Project for HBO Leigh Fondakowski spent three years traveling the U.S. to interview survivors of the Jonestown massacre, many of whom have never talked publicly about the tragedy. Using more than two hundred hours of interview material, Fondakowski creates intimate portraits of these survivors … More Most things written about the Jonestown saga end on Nov. 18, 1978, the day more than 900 Americans died. "Stories from Jonestown" begins on that day.
Today, UMP got a nice thumbs-up from Kobe Bryant. Recommended: Thirty Rooms to Hide In: Insanity, Addiction, and Rock ‘n’ Roll in the Shadow of the Mayo Clinic by Luke Longstreet Sullivan.
Author Luke Longstreet Sullivan has written an astonishing memoir about the story of his father’s descent from one of the world’s top orthopedic surgeons at the Mayo Clinic to a man who is increasingly abusive, alcoholic, and insane, ultimately dying alone on the floor of a Georgia motel room. For his wife and six sons, … More Insanity, addiction, and dark humor in the shadow of the Mayo Clinic
[Inspired by.] BY MARK DERY, cultural critic and author, most recently, of I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts What is your idea of earthly happiness? All the time in the world, all the books in the world, the creditors banished forever from my mailbox, the time clock stopped for all time, a pool of light … More Happiness, death, and a few of his favorite (and most loathed) things: Dery does the Proust Questionnaire
http://c.brightcove.com/services/viewer/federated_f9?isVid=1 More information: Reviews and upcoming events with Atina Diffley.
BY LO DAGERMAN Finally, the writings of Swedish author Stig Dagerman are becoming more available in the English language. Several volumes, some in new translations, are currently being published in the USA: German Autumn, Island of the Doomed, A Burnt Child (forthcoming) from the University of Minnesota Press, and a short story collection by Godine … More Our need for consolation: reading Stig Dagerman.
Late this year, U of MN Press published the first American edition of Stig Dagerman’s German Autumn, essays on the tragic aftermath of war, suffering, and guilt that are as hauntingly relevant today as they were sixty-plus years ago when Dagerman was first assigned by the Swedish newspaper Expressen to report on life in Germany … More “We wish to understand history as a whole, in order to understand ourselves.”
