Marion Winik
Marion Winik is the author of the new memoir Highs in the Low Fifties: How I Stumbled Through the Joys of Single Living. It joins Telling, First Comes Love, The Lunch-Box Chronicles, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead, and others in the ongoing saga of her life, now seven volumes. She writes a column at BaltimoreFishbowl.com, reviews books for Newsday, and contributes to the Sun and many other magazines. She has appeared on the Today show, Oprah, and Politically Incorrect, was a commentator on NPR’s All Things Considered for 15 years, and was the Answer Lady for Ladies’ Home Journal. These days, she is a professor in the MFA creative writing program at the University of Baltimore and lives in Baltimore, Maryland, with a couple of her kids and a miniature dachshund. For more information visit her website, marionwinik.com.
Guesswork: Essays on forgetting and remembering who we are
Funny, thought-provoking, and always entertaining, personal essayist Marion Winik is known for decades of storytelling on NPR and the stunning memoir First Comes Love. Memory and identity are the focus of this new collection, Guesswork, drawn from a column that has won “Best of Baltimore” from Baltimore magazine several years running. “The Things They Googled” looks at how search engines have changed our lives. “Love, Loss, and What I Cooked” takes autobiography to the kitchen. “What If You Were Right?” and “What If You Were Wrong?” highlight the way possibly incorrect interpretations of long-ago events subtly radiate through our lives over the years. These eight essays will inspire you to reconsider your own history and sense of self from new angles: how treasured places and objects fit in, how your life as a reader shapes who you are. A wonderful introduction to Winik’s work, which now spans seven volumes chronicling her life. “Her essays are mind-blowing,” according to Jane Smiley, “You can’t stop reading them.”
The End of the World as We Know It: Essays about motherhood
Winner of Child magazine’s Book of the Year award for her hilarious and candid book on single motherhood, The Lunch-Box Chronicles, Marion Winik returns to the topic of parenting in these nine essays. Beginning with the story of her second wedding and her move to rural Pennsylvania, she covers everything from blending families and having a child in one’s 40s to dealing with the legal problems of teenage boys to the evolution of the values of a family over generations. The central essay of the group, “The Story of Laurie,” focuses on Winik’s profound friendship with a mom she at first believes she has little in common with. As they get to know each other, she comes to understand just how wrong she was.
August in Paris: And Other Travel Misadventures
If you love David Sedaris, you’ll have to read Marion Winik’s anything-but-traditional tales of traveling with her cranky family in tow. From lost teenagers and missed connections to overpriced drinks and gambling mishaps, Winik–author of seven memoirs, and a Morning Edition commentator on NPR– illuminates the unexpected pleasures of journeying out of your comfort zone.
Ranging from Paris to Peru, from New Orleans to Uganda to the Atlantis resort in the Bahamas, these travel essays are full of life, humor, and humanity. Whether or not you’re hitting the road solo or with loved ones trailing behind, you’ll want these on your e-reader before you set out.