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5 Reasons to Teach This Book: All the Wild Hungers

Bailey Hutchinson — 08/04/2020

Welcome, friends, to the latest installment of 5 Reasons to Teach This Book! In this interview series, we examine what we can learn from Milkweed’s titles by discussing our books with educators, authors, and booksellers. This month, we’re featuring Karen Babine’s 2020 Minnesota Book Award winning book, All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer.

In this interview, Karen and I discuss both the craft and critique of personal nonfiction. What on the page contributes to an author’s voice, that borderline indefinable element of craft? How do we accommodate our eagerness for answers in literature without…

Authors / Interviews

Deep Cuts—Allison Adair's The Clearing

Bailey Hutchinson — 07/02/2020

Hello, friends, and welcome to another edition of Deep Cuts. In this series, we’ll be diving in with some of our authors and discussing the behind-the-scenes work that goes into the composition and production of their books. This time around, I am beyond thrilled to be in conversation with the winner of the 2020 Max Ritvo Poetry Prize, Allison Adair.

Her recently-released poetry collection, The Clearing, is a hypnotic exercise in tangible language that verbs us through reflections on motherhood, on imagination, on desire, on flora and fauna, and more. Her poems ask readers to consider how close language…

Authors / What Matters Most / Watch & Listen

What Matters Most | Ep. 4 Beth Dooley

Milkweed Staff — 05/13/2020
Video URL

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Every Monday, author Beth Dooley and her son Kip have a standing zoom call. On their call, they cook a meal together, without a recipe, using only whatever staples they have on hand. They also talk—a lot!—about limits (real and metaphorical), substitutions, and what it means to ‘make do’ without feeling deprived. In Beth’s words, “it’s not really about being optimistic; it’s about living within our means and allowing what we DO have to spark creativity.” They’ve dubbed their…

Authors

5 Reasons to Teach This Book: The Blue Sky

Bailey Hutchinson — 05/08/2020

Welcome, friends, to the latest installment of 5 Reasons to Teach This Book! In this interview series, we examine what we can learn from Milkweed’s titles by discussing our books with educators, authors, and booksellers. This month, we’re featuring The Blue Sky, a novel that originally joined our catalogue in 2006 but will be reissued this summer as part of the Seedbank series.

The Blue Sky is a tale of family—blood and found—and the distances we travel to preserve our chosen bonds. In fictionalizing his own childhood, author Galsan Tschinag walks readers through the familiar and anxious…

Authors / What Matters Most / Watch & Listen

What Matters Most | Ep. 3 Margaret Renkl

Milkweed Staff — 05/07/2020
Video URL

Note: To view the closed captions, click the YouTube logo in the bottom right corner to view the video on YouTube.

For the third episode of What Matters Most, author Margaret Renkl joins us from her backyard and gives us a personal tour of her “pollinator garden,” where she has intentionally planted seeds that serve as refuge and fuel for the bees and butterflies who traverse her home in middle-Tennessee.

“It’s really a great comfort—if we had to be locked in our houses anyway— that it happened in the springtime when there is so much new life and that is…

Authors / What Matters Most / Watch & Listen

What Matters Most | Ep. 2 Su Hwang

Milkweed Staff — 04/30/2020
Video URL

Note: To view the closed captions, click the YouTube logo in the bottom right corner to view the video on YouTube. 

Welcome to the second episode of What Matters Most, a new video series by and for the Milkweed community. This week, poet Su Hwang invites us into her home and reflects on the ideas of interconnectedness and earthly wisdom that are comforting to her. Su also asks us to reflect on how we can sustain ourselves and each other through this difficult time—finding solace in the words of fellow Milkweed author, Robin Wall Kimmerer.

“When I…