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Writers LIVE!
Upcoming events
For more info about Writers Live! contact John Jessen at john.jessen@nhfpl.org or call 203-946-8130 x232.
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Into Thick Air by Jim Malusa is a travelogue of a series of bicycle trips to the lowest points on earth - from Cairo to the Dead Sea. The stories, in journal form, first appeared on Discovery Channel Online. Barbara Kingsolver wrote: "I've followed all of Jim's amazing and hilarious journeys, and am happy to claim him as one of my favorite writers."
Jim Malusa has reported on assignments for The Discovery Channel and Natural History, including travels to Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines, the Atacama Desert in Chile, and Three Gorges Dam in China. A botanist and a lover of maps, his specialty is the biogeography of southern Arizona flora. Malusa lives in Tucson with his wife and their two children.
From the publisher:
With plenty of sunscreen and a cold beer swaddled in his sleeping bag, writer and botanist Jim Malusa bicycled alone to the lowest point on each of six continents, a six-year series of “anti-expeditions” to the “anti-summits.” His journeys took him to Lake Eyre in the arid heart of Australia, along Moses’ route to the Dead Sea, and from Moscow to the Caspian Sea. He pedaled across the Andes to Patagonia, around tiny Djibouti in the Horn of Africa, and from Tucson to Death Valley. With a scientist’s eye, he vividly observes local landscapes and creatures. As a lone man, he is overfed by grandmothers, courted by ladies of the night in Volgograd, invited into a mosque by Africa’s most feared tribe, chased by sandstorms and hurricanes — yet Malusa keeps riding. His reward: the deep silence of the world’s great depressions. A large-hearted narrative of what happens when a friendly, perceptive American puts himself at the mercy of strange landscapes and their denizens, Into Thick Air presents one of the most talented new voices in contemporary travel writing.
From the Reviewers:
"Delightful debut travelogue by botanist Malusa, who cycled to the lowest point on each of six continents. This peculiar quest sent him along routes connecting areas as diverse as Cairo and the Dead Sea, the Australian outback and Lake Eyre. Though Malusa personally devised each of his six expeditions (he traversed every continent except Antarctica), the Discovery Channel Online paid him to carry a satellite telephone and transmit blogs of his travels. Rather than simply a collection of these blogs, his book tells the full story behind them... This dense yet desultory account moves quickly, never lingering on any encounter for more thana few sentences, no matter how juicy. It's not as informative as the works of Bill Bryson, but easily as funny. Steeped in sarcasm and alive to the irony of any situation, observant and wry, omnivorous in the scope of its details and utterly subjective." - Kirkus Reviews
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Into Thick Air
Jim Malusa
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April 17, 2008 - Anne Fadiman along with students Michael Birnbaum, Matthew Kozlark and Carina del Valle Schorske
April 5, 2008 - Terry Hargrove - Don't Mind Me: A Tennessean Lost in Connecticut
February 7, 2008 - Jonathan Tropper - How To Talk To A Widower
December 8, 2007 - Justin Evans - A Good and Happy Child
November 3, 2007 - Michael White - Soul Catcher
October 25, 2007 - Jennifer Gilmore - Golden Country
October 13, 2007 - Yvette Christianse - Unconfessed
September 29, 2007 - Dale Peck - Hatchet Jobs: Writings on Contemporary Fiction
August 14, 2007 - Michael Kohn - Dateline Mongolia : An American Journalist In Nomad's Land
May 3, 2007 - Dr. Howard Blue A Southerner’s Reflection on Race Matters: To Kill A Mockingbird and the Transformative Power of Literature and Film
April 25, 2007 - Charles Shields Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee
April 21, 2007 - Patricia Klindienst - The Earth Knows My Name: Food, Culture, and Sustainability in the Gardens of Ethnic Americans.
April 10, 2007 - Ishmael Beah - A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of A Boy Soldier
February 3, 2007 - Tinling Choong - Firewife
November 30, 2006 - Anna Baltzer - Witness in Palestine
November 18, 2006 - Local mystery writer James R. Benn Billy Boyle: A World War Two Mystery
November 9, 2006 - Heidi Julavits - Uses Of Enchantment
October 30, 2006 - Amy Blackmarr - Dahlonega Haunts
October 23, 2006 - Mark Danielewski - Only Revolutions
October 17, 2006 - Paul Bass (co-authored with Douglas Rae) - Murder In The Model City: The Black Panters, Yale, and The Redemption of a Killer. Special guest: Warren Kimbro
October 7, 2006 - Local mystery writer Karen Olson - Secondhand Smoke
October 5, 2006 - Local author Nancy Schumacher - Swallow’s Flight: Tales of Persons with
Misunderstood Neurological Disorders
September 23, 2006 - Lisa Jervis & Andi Zeisler Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine.
September 9, 2006 - Mother Clare Watts - Giving Birth to God: A Woman's Path to Enlightenment
July 7, 2006 - George Singleton - Drowning in Gruel
June 17, 2006 - Fay Vincent - The Only Game in Town
June 3, 2006 - Sarah Bilston - Bed Rest
May 30, 2006 - Julia Glass - The Whole World Over
May 8, 2006 - Suhail Shadoud - Burning In the Past Tense
April 29, 2006 - John Weir (The Irreversible Decline of Eddie Socket) and Edmund White (My Lives)
April 22, 2006 - Tom Reiss - The Orientalist
April 8, 2006 - Mark Kurlansky - The Big Oyster: History on the Half Shell.
March 18, 2006 - Anthony Wolf - Why Can't You Shut up?: How We Ruin Relationships--How Not To
March 4, 2006 - Double Debuts! John Haskell (American Purgatorio) and Benjamin Kunkel (Indecision)
February 23, 2006 - Anne Fadiman along with students Abigail Deutsch, Jeremy Kutner and Sarah Stillman
February 11, 2006 - Heather Rogers (Gone Tomorrow: The Hidden Life of Garbage) & Elizabeth Royte (The Tapir’s Morning Song and Garbage Land: On the Secret Trail of Trash
February 2, 2006 - Kenji Jasper - The House on Childress Street: A Memoir of My Grandfather
Are you sorry you missed one? To get plenty of advance notice about upcoming Writers Live! events send a "subscribe" email to john.jessen@nhfpl.org.
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