Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s newest book is a collection of illustrated nature essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments (Milkweed Editions, August 2020). She is also the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Oceanic, winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award. Her writing appears in Poetry, the New York Times Magazine, ESPN, and Tin House. She serves as poetry faculty for the Writing Workshops in Greece and is professor of English and creative writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. She was recently named a 2020 Guggenheim Fellow in poetry.
Reading List
Touch-Me-Nots
Of all the approximately 1.5 million plants the Chicago Botanic Garden has on site, the one that scared and delighted me the most when I was a child was Mimosa pudica—the touch-me-not plant. (Or, depending on your preference: sensitive plant, shame plant, humble plant, tickle-me plant, and my favorite, sleeping grass.) In Malayalam, my father’s […]
Catalpa Tree
A catalpa can give two brown girls in western Kansas a green umbrella from the sun. Don’t get too dark, too dark, our mother would remind us as we ambled out into the relentless midwestern light. Every day after school, the bus dropped me and my younger sister off at Larned State Hospital, and every […]