We're hosting literary journalist Inara Verzemnieks here at Dartmouth today (4 pm, Sanborn Library, with novelist Castle Freeman, free to public). I discovered Inara through her brilliantly reported and observed essay "The Last Days of the Baldock" in the summer issue of Tin House magazine. On the strength of that essay alone, I knew I wanted her to visit Dartmouth. I looked her up and saw that she was a recent Iowa grad. But a ringer -- 13 years a feature writer for daily papers before graduate school, a Pulitzer Prize finalist in 2007. Well, better yet. Since then, I've been collecting Verzemnieks essays. I thought I'd found one in a magazine called Defunct, but the page, alas, is defunct. Still, Defunct is a find. That's how free association works. From Tin House to Inara to Defunct, an online magazine published by former Iowa director Robin Hemley, "borne of the idea that strong, condenses nonfiction can resurrect the dead, salvage the past, and, perhaps most importantly, quell the existential unease of nostalgia."
Like it was made for me! Defunct will go on the syllabus for my nonfiction course dedicated to experimental forms in pursuit of the past, "Raising the Dead."
Like it was made for me! Defunct will go on the syllabus for my nonfiction course dedicated to experimental forms in pursuit of the past, "Raising the Dead."
RSS Feed