Good morning Lincolnites, Nebraskans, and citizens of this lovely state/country/world. Wherever you are, I hope you are as excited as I am to be a part of the University of Nebraska Press blog project. I actually keep a personal blog already, but it tends to be populated mainly with anecdotes about my bad first dates and bad haircuts, so I will endeavor to keep this one a bit more highbrow.
A bit about me… I’m a native Lincoln kid, and a graduate of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. While there, in an effort to diversify my cornfed pedigree, I spent some time studying in India and Southeast Asia. After graduation I spent a year and a half in Thailand on a Fulbright fellowship, then moved to Washington, DC, the city of alpha dogs and politicos, and in my neighborhood, some really shocking looking prostitutes. Life was never dull. After spending a few years in nonprofit communications, I enrolled at George Mason University, where I earned my MFA in creative nonfiction writing. My thesis was a collection of international travel essays called "Peripatecia" (a "travel disease" I made up, from the root word peripatetic.) It was read by a hugely grateful and appreciative audience of… nine. Including my parents.
My interests, which I think you’ll see reflected in the books I choose to write about here, are literary nonfiction, travel, politics, sociology and cultural anthropology. I also love pop culture, so the day that NU Press puts out a definitive Michael Jackson biography, I will be ALL over it. I’ve started off my reading list with Masters of American Cookery by Betty Fussell and M.F.K. Fisher. I read a lot of Fisher in grad school, because she really is the queen of food writing. This month, I think I was drawn to this book because I’m on a horrible, self-imposed diet, and the idea of reading about sumptuous recipes was appealing. I’m partway through the book, and while the prose is magnificent, not all of the recipes are. Cod in mustard sauce? You must be kidding me, Julia Child. However, I am nothing if not tenacious, and before I write a more thorough critique of this book next week, I will audition a few of its recipes so that I can offer some mini-reviews to you, dear readers. Stay tuned…
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