The world’s largest ball of paint, baby clowns and airplane passenger safety cards all appear in Ander Monson’s nonfiction works.
Monson, an award-winning author, read a selection of his published works 7:30 p.m. March 7 in Yeager Recital Hall to an audience of English department faculty members and students.
Monson began the evening by reading two nonfiction essays from his book, “Vanishing Point,” both of which included a reflection on his visit to the world’s largest ball of paint in Alexandria, Ind.
“Americans seem to have a fascination with having the world’s largest things,” Monson said.
The next selections Monson shared were from a project titled “Letters to a Future Lover.” Each piece in this collection is 750 words, and was inspired by hand-written inscriptions Monson found in used books.
The title of the collection refers not to a romantic lover, but to a future lover of the short essays composed for the project, Monson said.
In some ways this project was inspired by his fondness for traditional books as opposed to the more recently popular e-books, Monson said.
“There’s a history with books,” Monson said, “You can’t see that history with an e-book. You can’t see what someone else is reading on the subway with an e-book.”
Monson concluded his reading with two poems from his book titled “The Available World.”
The first of these was a darker poem that began with an epigraph about baby clowns, which Monson prefaced by saying, “feel free to laugh, or to be depressed by this if you prefer.”
Monson has won numerous awards throughout his career, including the Graywolf Press Nonfiction Prize for a collection of his essays titled “Neck Deep and Other Predicaments.”
In addition to sharing his work, Monson announced Kelsey Camacho, Cody Greene and Jillian Wise as the winners of the English department’s nonfiction writing contest.