Author Archives: stefaniebrooktrout

Book Reviews, Editing

Book Review on Bryson’s “One Summer”

Bryson

Me and Bill (October 28, 2013)

Last fall, Bill Bryson visited Ames, Iowa, for a reading. As a nonfiction writer, this was a dream come true. If nonfiction writing was baseball, Bill Bryson would be Babe Ruth. As far as I’m concerned, Bryson is a living legend. I contained my over-enthusiasm about meeting him long enough to lob him a question in the Q&A session and to have him sign my copy of his latest book, One Summer: America, 1927. At the time, I hadn’t actually read the book yet–it’s over 500 pages, and I’m in graduate school–but this winter, I finally sat down with One Summer, and I hardly came up for air until that “one hell of a summer” had ended.

In short, it was fantastic. For the long version, check my book review for Flight Patterns, the Flyway blog.

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Nonfiction, Presentations, Public Appearances, Readings

Reading in Ames

Friday, February 14, 2014, at 7:00 pm
Design on Main, 203 Main Street, Ames, Iowa

Eight graduate students in the MFA program for Creative Writing and Environment will present their fieldwork experiences and read creative work inspired by those experiences.

I will be presenting on my summer 2013 writing residency at the Iowa Lakeside Laboratory. I will read an excerpt from “CLAMPology,” an essay I wrote in appreciation for the community volunteers who do all of the water sampling for CLAMP, the Cooperative Lakes Area Monitoring Program, an initiative coordinated by Lakeside in partnership with the State Hygienic Laboratory at the University of Iowa.

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Editing, Web Roves

Web Rove on “A Flighty Future”

Inspired by the visual art of Sarah Hatton, I roved the web looking for great writing about bees. But once I stumbled upon Adam Johnson’s “Nirvana,” I had to expand my focus to include domestic drones as well. (The connection? Hager’s short story “Droning.” Tenuous, maybe, but punny enough.)

Check out the links and what I had to say about the pieces in my latest web rove, “A Flighty Future: Bees and Domestic Drones,” at Flight Patterns, the Flyway blog.

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