Author Talk and Signing with Andrew Grace

Ohio poet Andrew Grace joins us for a conversation and signing to celebrate his latest collection, A Brief History of the Midwest.

About the Author:

Andrew Grace was born in 1978 in Champaign-Urbana, Illinois, where his family has farmed for several generations.

​He studied English literature at Kenyon College in Ohio, and earned his MFA at Washington University in St. Louis. He attended Stanford as a Stegner Fellow, and earned his Doctoral degree from the University of Cincinnati.

​He is the the author of three books of poems, A Belonging Field (Salt Publishing), Shadeland (Ohio State University Press) and SANCTA (Ahsahta/Foundlings). His work has appeared in the New Yorker, Poetry, Boston Review, New Criterion and Adroit Journal amongst others. He is also a Senior Editor at the Kenyon Review.

​He now teaches poetry at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio where he lives with his wife Tory and their two daughters.

About the book:

A Brief History of the Midwest is a lyric encapsulation of the hardship and hope of the American Midwest.

These poems trace the trajectory of the middle of America from its colonization to the present day. Hardships that range from loneliness to the opioid crisis to the largest earthquake in US history reverberate through the collection’ s fields, Northern waters, and derelict barns. The losses here are both historical and personal, as is the resilience of those who survived them. All the while there are moments of light that transcend a history “ written in thorn,” a moment of rest after bathing sheep, the flick of a trout in the Boyne River, a fistful of rose hips.

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