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Lunch at the Library on October 6

2010-09-03T21:09:57Z

I will be reading from and talking about my current writing project, Three Rivers: Journeys and Junctures, at noon on Wednesday, October 6 at Bennett Martin Public Library in Lincoln. The program is sponsored by the Nebraska Literary Heritage Association.

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2010-07-15T13:43:46Z

“Meanderings,” an essay that reflects on the serpentine shape of meandering streams of water (both the Platte River and the sinuously-shaped street, a former creek bed, in front of a house where I used to live) from the perspectives of scientists and artists, will be published in the August 2010 issue of Nebraskaland. A slightly longer and more freewheelin' version of "Meanderings" will be part of the Platte River section of Three Rivers, the essay collection that I'm completing this summer.

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2010-05-29T16:41:12Z

I will be giving a lecture, "The Art of the Essay," at the summer residency of Goucher College's MFA Program in Creative Nonfiction at 2:00 on Friday, August 6, 2010 in Baltimore, Maryland.

"Nauvoo, the Beautiful Place"

2010-04-11T12:29:28Z

“Nauvoo, the Beautiful Place” has been published in the current issue of Big Muddy: A Journal of the Mississippi River Valley. This essay is about a town in western Illinois with a remarkable past: it was the site of two, mid-19^th-century utopias, one Mormon, one Icarian, as well as the oldest vineyards and wineries in the state. In recent years, many of the locals who have long loved Nauvoo, myself included, have had to grieve the loss of buildings, landscape, and access resulting from the surge of development by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the related influx of Mormon tourists and the Mormon retirees who are buying or building homes there.

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2010-03-12T22:58:35Z

A celebration in honor of the publication of the Loren Eiseley Reader by the Loren Eiseley Society will be held April 10, 2010, 7 to 9 PM at the Great Plains Art Museum, 1155 "Q" Street, Lincoln Nebraska. I am looking forward to reading an excerpt from Eiseley's work at this event.

Eiseley's influence as a writer and thinker is felt far beyond Nebraska. In her introduction to the Best American Essays of 1988, Annie Dillard writes, "In this [20th] century, it was Loren Eiseley -- a scientist -- who restored the essay's place in imaginative literature and who extended its symbolic capacity." Even though I never met Eiseley, I consider him to be one of my writing teachers.

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2010-01-13T03:02:29Z

My collection of essays, Interior Places, which was published last year by the University of Nebraska Press, is being reviewed in the following journals:

Fourth Genre, ISLE (Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment), and Western American Literature.

I will post these as they become available -- unless, of course, I don't like what the reviewers say!

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2009-11-07T01:46:08Z

As part of the 2009 Nebraska Book Festival, I will be giving a short reading at nuVibe Juice and Java at 126 N. 14th in Lincoln on Saturday, November 14, 6 to 8 p.m. Please come!

No Other River

2009-10-01T01:03:57Z

My essay about the half-million or so sandhill cranes that gather on the central Platte River each spring was published in the fall 2009 issue of The Iowa Review. This essay will be included in Three Rivers, the book I'm currently working on. Click here for a brief excerpt.

In the works...

2009-08-05T00:13:00Z

My current book project is Three Rivers: Journeys and Junctures, essays about the Platte, Missouri, and Mississippi Rivers. Several of the essays have been published or are forthcoming. You can find more information about them by clicking on the "Current Projects" link to the right.

Finally up and running

2009-07-17T03:29:00Z

Thanks for stopping by! I finally have my own place on the Web but it's still under construction, so please bear with me. I'll be updating this on a somewhat irregular schedule so check in from time to time, and thank you for your support.