World of Wonders Book Discussion
Winona Public Library’s Bell Art Room
Wednesday, August 2, 2023 | 2-3 pm
Join the Winona Area Community, Winona Public Library, and Minnesota Marine Art Museum (MMAM) as we read World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments, by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, throughout the month of August as part of the library’s Community Reads program. Nezhukumatathil is an award-winning poet and World of Wonders is her New York Times bestselling memoir. The book is a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us. Starting July 1st, books will be available for free at your nearest little free library, the Winona Public Library, and the Minnesota Marine Art Museum.
World of Wonders and its original illustrations by Fumi Nakamura are also on exhibition currently at MMAM in Waking Worlds: Wondrous Reads for Curious Minds.
Three events will happen throughout the month of August in conjunction with the book. On Wednesday, August 2, we will be discussing World of Wonders at the Winona Library. Using specific questions available in the free books and on the Library's website, we will discuss Aimee Nezhukumatathil's book.
related events:
About the Author and Illustrator
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (2020, Milkweed Editions), which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2018), Lucky Fish (2011), At The Drive-in Volcano (2007), and Miracle Fruit (2003), the last three from Tupelo Press. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House.
Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. In 2021, she became the first-ever poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program
Fumi Nakamura
Fumi Nakamura is an artist and illustrator based in New York City. Born in Shizuoka, Japan, she moved to the Bay Area of California when she was 12. She is represented by Thinkspace Art Projects in Los Angeles, and her commissions include original work for clients such as Harper's Magazine, HarperCollins, Milkweed Editions, Puma, GAP, Dior, Urban Outfitters, and the Cornucopia Institute. Nakamura illustrated Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s best-selling book World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (2020, Milkweed Editions).
