Join us on Sunday, October 27th, at 6:30 for a celebration of the release of I Know About a Thousand Things: The Writings of Ann Alejandro of Uvalde, Texas. Put together by Ann's longtime friends, the poet Naomi Shihab Nye and the essayist Marion Winik, I Know About a Thousand Things gathers decades of writing and correspondence from Ann Alejandro, a brilliant writer who elected to never publish while she was alive. Naomi and Marion will be joined in conversation by poet Carrie Fountain for a discussion of the book and Ann's life and work.

You can reserve a seat at the event by purchasing a copy of the book in advance, and  non-reserved seats will be open to all.

about the book

Struggling for 30 years with chronic illness at her ranch outside Uvalde, Texas, Ann Alejandro was a writer of transporting natural talent and prolificity. Though she would have loved to be widely read and appreciated, she was too modest to scale the walls of the publishing world. Thus her chosen form was the letter and her audience close friends and family, including the poet Naomi Nye and the essayist Marion Winik. For decades, her often lengthy missives continued to delight her correspondents, blending observation, storytelling, humor, praise, and accounts of her deep attachment to the land and animals that surrounded her in the rural Southwest.

about the authors

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE has served as Young People’s Poet Laureate of the United States and poetry editor for the New York Times Magazine and the Texas Observer. She has written or edited more than thirty books and has worked as a visiting writer all her life. She received Lifetime Achievement awards from the Texas Institute of Letters, the National Books Critics Circle, and the Arab-American National Museum.

MARION WINIK is the author of The Big Book of the Dead, First Comes Love, and other books. Her essays have recently been published in Agni and The Hopkins Review. She reviews books for numerous publications and hosts The Weekly Reader podcast on NPR. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Baltimore and was a commentator on All Things Considered for 15 years.

Carrie Fountain is a poet, a novelist, and a children’s-book author. Her most recent collection of poems is “The Life.”