Such a splendid jacket blurb

Katherine Fischer, author of Dreaming the Mississippi, has written this blurb for What the River Carries.

Lisa Knopp has the eyes of an archeologist and the soul of a great blue heron as she renders this intimate portrayal of three national treasures—the Mississippi, Platte, and Missouri rivers.  Here we visit places as exotic as Little Egypt yet as familiar as streams connecting our own backyards to these great waterways. Knopp asks hard questions about human interaction—and interference—with these watery corridors which are largely responsible for American expansion.  Journeying through these pages, we also find tales of the shell button industry, Indian burial mounds,  Mormon settlement, catastrophic flooding, barge commerce, and every day lives of people who work and play along the shores. What this book carries?  Majesty.  Knowledge.  Inspiration.

Page proofs

The page proofs arrived, and I'm about to begin my final reading of What the River Carries before it's published. What a beautiful job the University of Missouri Press has done!

I must say it's wonderful and a bit disorienting to see the stories of my river journeys all prettied up and ready to appear in public.

A new publication

"Catfish Bend," the first essay in What the River Carries, has been published in the fall 2011 issue of Natural Bridge (the University of Missouri-St. Louis). It's an essay about catfish lore, fish stories, and the dangerous, frustrating, and magnificent Mississippi.

How to get your copy of my new book

What the River Carries is coming out in April and will be available from online retailers (amazon.com), your local bookstore or library, or from the University of Missouri Press. If you'd like to go directly to the press, here's the information:

Please phone, e-mail, fax or snail mail your order to:

University of Missouri Press
c/o The Chicago Distribution Center
11030 South Langley Ave.
Chicago, IL 60628

PHONE ORDERS: 
(800) 621-2736 (USA/Canada)
(773) 702-7000 (International)

FAX ORDERS 
(800) 621-8476 (USA/Canada)
(773) 702-7212 (International)

Email (orders only) to: orders@press.uchicago.edu
(Credit card orders by phone, fax, or mail only)

If you're faxing or snail mailing, order forms are available at the press website. http://press.umsystem.edu/catalog/CategoryInfo.aspx?cid=152

Many thanks!

Winter break

Waiting for the page proofs for What the River Carries. Reading Annie Dillard's Teaching a Stone to Talk and Yi-fu Tuan's Segmented Worlds and Self: Group Life and Individual Consciousness (both are amazing!). Getting started on the next book. Listening to good stories from my mom, son, and daughter.