A virtual celebration of the paperback release of Miracle Country: A Memoir of a Family and a Landscape, a story of a family in the high desert, by Nevada Reads author Kendra Atleework.
Nevada Reads author Kendra Atleework reads from her debut book, Miracle Country: A Memoir, and chats with writer and professor Michael P. Branch about memoir writing, writing about landscape, and how spending time in the high desert has shaped their work.
Photo/Amy Leist Photography.
Kendra Atleework was born and raised on the dry edge of California at the eastern base of the Sierra Nevada mountains. She moved away for a decade, mostly spent being homesick and researching the place she left behind—the product of which is her first book, Miracle Country, winner of the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award and 2021 pick for the statewide program Nevada Reads. Kendra holds an MFA in writing from the University of Minnesota. She has been awarded fellowships and residencies from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, the Anderson Center, and the Minnesota State Arts Board. Her writing has appeared in Best American Essays, The Atlantic, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. She is a recipient of the Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers Award and lives in her hometown of Bishop, California, where she can be found roaming the mountains and desert and growing a big garden.
Photo/Eryn J. Branch.
Michael P. Branch, who is Foundation Professor of English at the University of Nevada, Reno, has published nine books and more than 250 essays, articles, and reviews. His trilogy of humorous writing about life in the high desert includes the books Raising Wild (2016), Rants from the Hill (2017), and How to Cuss in Western (2018). Mike’s current book project, which is about the jackalope, will be published by Pegasus Books.
Books by these authors are available at our local Nevada independent bookstores: The Writer’s Block in Las Vegas and Sundance Books and Music in Reno.
This event is presented by Nevada Humanities, Sundance Books and Music, and The Writer’s Block. Nevada Reads is a program of Nevada Humanities and is made possible with support from Nevada State Library, Archives, and Public Records; the Institute of Museum and Library Services; and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Support for this event and others like it comes from the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies at Brigham Young University and the City of Reno.