For Lisa Knopp, homesickness is a literal sickness. During a lengthy sojourn away from the Nebraska prairie, she fell ill, and only when she decided to return home did she recover. Homesickness is the triggering event for this collection of essays concerned with nothing less than what it means to feel at home. Knopp writes masterfully about ecology, place, and the values and beliefs that sustain the individual within an impersonal world. She is passionate about her subject whether it be an endangered beetle in the salt marshes near Lincoln, Nebraska, a forgotten Nebraska inventor, a museum muralist, a paleontologist, or Arbor Day as the misguided attempt of Eastern settlers to “correct” a perceived deficiency in the Great Plains landscape. Here is a writer who has read widely and judiciously and for whom everything resonates within the intricately structured definition of home.
Lisa Knopp is the author of five collections of essays: Interior Places, The Nature of Home, Flight Dreams: A Life in the Midwestern Landscape, and Field of Vision, each of which explores the concepts of place, home, nature, and spirituality. What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte is forthcoming from the University of Missouri Press in April 2011. (http://press.umsystem.edu/product/What-the-River-Carries,2094.aspx)
Knopp's essays have appeared in many of the best publications, including Shenandoah, Gettysburg Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, Connecticut Review, Creative Nonfiction, Iowa Review, and Northwest Review. Six of her essays have received Notable Essay citations in the Best American Essays series.
Knopp was born and raised in Burlington, Iowa, and received her education at Burlington Community High School, Iowa Wesleyan College, Western Illinois University, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. She has taught creative nonfiction in the MFA programs at Southern Illinois University and Goucher College in Baltimore, Maryland. Currently, she's an Associate Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Omaha. She lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, near her son and daughter.
