Hamline Midway Library
1558 W Minnehaha Ave
St Paul, MN 55104
United States
Free and open to the public
The Saint Paul Public Library’s Fireside Reading Series will host Karen Babine, author of All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer. This season, the series is asking Fireside authors to talk about what “home” means to them. The goal is to complement the citywide conversation happening this winter as part of Read Brave Saint Paul, an intergenerational reading program whose 2019 theme is housing.
About the Book: When her mother is diagnosed with a rare form of cancer, Karen Babine – a cook, collector of thrifted vintage cast iron, and fiercely devoted daughter, sister, and aunt – can’t help but wonder: feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? And so she commits herself to preparing her mother anything she will eat; a vegetarian diving headfirst into the unfamiliar world of bone broth and pot roast. In these essays, Babine ponders the intimate connections between food, family, and illness. What draws us toward food metaphors to describe disease? What is the power of language, of naming, in a medical culture where patients are too often made invisible? How do we seek meaning where none is to be found – and can we create it from scratch?
About the Author: Babine is the author of Water and What We Know: Following the Roots of a Northern Life, winner of a 2016 Minnesota Book Award and finalist for both the Midwest Book Award and the Northeastern Minnesota Book Award. She also edits Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Eastern Washington University and a PhD in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She lives in Minneapolis.
About the Series: With cookies in one hand and coffee in the other, enjoy six weeks of free readings at Hamline Midway Library. Now in its 26th season, the Fireside Reading Series is one of The Friends’ oldest and most popular events. The series annually highlights the work of some of Minnesota’s finest writers who have published a new work in the previous year. Programs are accompanied by coffee, cider, cookies, and book signings. American Sign Language interpretation will be provided.
Karen Babine
Karen Babine is two-time Minnesota Book Award-winning author of All the Wild Hungers: A Season of Cooking and Cancer.
Feed a fever, starve a cold, but what do we do for cancer? Generous and bittersweet, these essays ponder the intimate connections between food, family, and illness.