Donna Seaman - "River of Books" - Matthew Engelke
Donna Seaman will discuss her new book River of Books: A Life In Reading. She will be joined in conversation by Matthew Engelke. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.
At the Seminary Co-op
Presented in partnership with the UChicago Division of the Humanities Creative Writing Department
About the Book: A memoir of reading and working with books by the renowned Booklist editor.
With the infectious curiosity of an inveterate bibliophile and the prose of a fine stylist, Donna Seaman charts the course of her early reading years in a book-by-book chronicle of the significance books have held in her life. River of Books recounts Seaman's journey in becoming an editor for Booklist, a reviewer, an author, and a literary citizen, and lays bare how she nourished both body and soul in working with books. Seaman makes palpable the power and self-recognition that she discovered in a life dedicated to reading.
About the Author: Donna Seaman is the adult books editor at Booklist, a member of the Content Leadership Team for the American Writers Museum, and a recipient of the Louis Shore Award for excellence in book reviewing, the James Friend Memorial Award for Literary Criticism, and the Studs Terkel Humanities Service Award. Seaman has written for the Chicago Tribune, Los Angeles Times, and other publications. She has been a writer-in-residence for Columbia College Chicago and has taught at Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. Seaman created the anthology In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness, her author interviews are collected in Writers on the Air: Conversations about Books, and she is the author of Identity Unknown: Rediscovering Seven American Women Artists.
About the Interlocutor: Matthew Engelke is the publisher and editor of Prickly Paradigm Press, which includes Ode Books. Prickly Paradigm has had a connection to the Seminary Co-op since its founding, in 2002, and Matthew has been a member and supporter of the Co-op since his days as a U of C undergrad, back in the early 1990s. Outside of his editing and publishing ventures, Matthew is currently professor and chair of the Department of Religion at Columbia University. Before joining the faculty at Columbia, he taught at the London School of Economics. Trained as an anthropologist, he has published three books, most recently How to Think Like an Anthropologist (Princeton University Press). He has another book forthcoming from Princeton in 2026, on humanist funerals. Most of his anthropological research has focused on Christianity and secular humanism, and explores a range of themes, from ritual life to the importance of books, media and material culture. He has been awarded the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing and the Clifford Geertz Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion.
Related Titles
Ode Books is thrilled to announce the forthcoming publication River of Books: A Life in Reading by Donna Seaman, a memoir of reading and working with books by the renowned Booklist editor.
With the infectious curiosity of an inveterate bibliophile and the prose of a fine stylist, Donna Seaman charts the course of her early reading years in a book-by-book chronicle of the significance books have held in her life. River of Books recounts Seaman’s journey in becoming an editor for Booklist, a reviewer, an author, and a literary citizen, and lays bare how she nourished both body and soul in working with books. Seaman makes palpable the power and self-recognition that she discovered in a life dedicated to reading.
River of Books: A Life in Reading will be released on November 5, 2024. Pre-order your copy today!
“A ‘constant reader’ who generously advocates for a wide diet of literature, from novels to poetry to narrative nonfiction to essays and all that lie between, Seaman counsels that “the more varied our reading, the more detailed, intricate, and vital our perceptions become.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS
"Donna Seaman reads with her whole body, and RIVER OF BOOKS is a hymn to her vocation, a testament to her immersions, the story of her transports. The surface is calm, but the water runs deep in this memoir of intense responses, of enchantments and ecstasies."
—EDWARD HIRSCH, author, Stranger by Night, editor for 100 Poems to Break Your Heart
"River of Books is a beautiful memoir. Deeply personal, it is moving, dazzling, and spiced with touches of Seaman's slantwise sense of humor."
—SARA PARETSKY, author, Pay Dirt and other V. I. Warshawski novels and the memoir, Writing in an Age of Silence
"River of Books is as exhilarating as a first date, and it delivers: The memoir of a lifelong book lover who brings us her keen, engaging perspective on her own reading and the larger world of books, it will warm you and delight you and make you realize how fabulous reading can be."
—SUSAN ORLEAN, author, On Animals and The Library Book