Naomi Shihab Nye and Marion Winik: I KNOW ABOUT A THOUSAND THINGS (with Emma Snyder)

Bird in Hand is honored to welcome beloved poet Naomi Shihab Nye, and Baltimore’s own Marion Winik in an event for their co-edited volume I Know About a Thousand Things: The Writings of Ann Alejandro of Uvalde, Texas.

This volume is both a work of high intellect and a work of deep love, created in memory of a shared correspondent: Ann Alejandro. 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 Naomi Nye and 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.

Before Ann’s death in 2019 at the age of 64, Naomi and Marion promised her they would pull together a book from thousands of pages left in their care. They selected the very best of Ann Alejandro, added commentary, and organized the material into chapters with titles like Faith, Motherhood, Land, Snakes, Pain, and Love.

The volume is an extraordinary collection of writing put together by two longtime literary friends in tribute to a third. It includes an introduction by Nye and and an afterword by Winik, as well as a photo gallery of Ann’s life. Emma Snyder, owner of Bird in Hand Coffee & Books and the Ivy Bookshop, will join the co-editors in conversation.

Purchase I Know About a Thousand Things here!

RSVP Here!

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.

Emma Snyder is the owner of The Ivy Bookshop and Bird in Hand Coffee & Books in Baltimore, Maryland. The former Executive Director of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation, she holds an MFA in Fiction from the University of Wisconsin. A native of Baltimore, she’s delighted to be back home and surrounded by books.