NEWS

Author of two poetry collections and a book of essays, Dr. Kathryn Nuernberger will read from her work at 6 p.m. Dec. 13 in George T. Madison Hall (GTM), Room 105, at Louisiana Tech University.

Currently a professor at University of Minnesota, Nuernberger has received wide critical acclaim for her work and has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life, American Antiquarian Society, and the Spring Creek Project at the H. J. Andrews Research Forest. Her current research interests include ethnobotanical histories of plants that have been used for birth control and women historically accused of witchcraft.

Nuernberger will also give a craft talk open to University students, faculty, and staff at 4 p.m. Dec. 13 in GTM 223.

Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past, Nuernberger’s critically acclaimed book of essays, is a collection of rumors, secrets, tall tales, and lies that begins at the court of Louis XV and ends in the foothills of the Ozark mountains. Her essays are rigorously researched and yet have a personal tone, seen particularly in “’And now brightness falls from the air,’” a piece about the French hot-air balloonist Sophie Blanchard, whom Louis XV named “Aeronaut of the Official Festivals.”

Her work consciously investigates the inter-genre relationship between poetry and the lyric essay in “Pantoum for Tilly Matthews,” which follows the pattern of repetition used in this poetic form. Also of note is Nuernberger’s attention to the ghost stories of the Ozarks, which are discussed with sensitivity and curiosity.  

For more information, please contact Veronica Schuder at schuder@latech.edu or 318.376.9167.