Authors and Artists

Fall 2018

Scholarship

Evolutionary Demography

Vince Eckhart, Waldo S. Walker Professor of Biology, and his colleagues Monica Geber (Cornell University) and David Moeller (University of Minnesota) have received a grant of $450,000 from the National Science Foundation’s Long-Term Research in Evolutionary Biology program for a five-year project, a continuation of a previous five-year grant to the three investigators. By studying Clarkia xantiana, a flowering plant native to California, Eckhart, Geber, Moeller, and their students will investigate how evolutionary adaptation contributes to population size and the geographic range of a species. They will also continue — and expand to Grinnell — a project called Market Science, which connects citizens with research scientists at local farmers’ markets. 

Books

Four-Letter Word

Eight friends. One game. A dozen regrets. And a night that will ruin them all, in this high stakes story of manipulation and innocence lost. The latest young adult novel (Simon Pulse, 2018) by Christa Soule Desir ’96 is partially set on the Grinnell College campus. Desir says early trade reviews have been all over the map from “refreshingly sex positive” to “way too graphic for school libraries but teenagers will probably like it.”

Gott’cha! Rubik’s Cube

For crossword and puzzle readers, Phil Morales ’72 has a fourth edition (LE3 Aerial Photography, 2018) of a book originally released in 1980. This new version turns the solution on its head. Instead of trying to solve an unsolved cube, the Quick Start section shows how a solved cube can be “unsolved” and then re-solved in three short steps. Armed with this knowledge, the reader can then solve the cube from any state.

Harms’ Way

Thomas Rayfiel ’80 sets his eighth novel (Permanent Press, 2018) in the voice and head of Ethan Harms, inmate of a “supermax” detention facility. As Ethan negotiates this perilous landscape, trying to find redemption, trying to understand the actions that brought him here, we begin to wonder how much of a difference there is between a prison of steel bars and razor tape and a prison erected by the nature of the human soul itself, the question being, in either instance, if one escapes … what lies beyond?

Lonely Men Club

Mike Kleine ’11 produced this 100,000-word, computer-generated novel about a time-traveling manifestation of the Zodiac Killer for the small press Inside the Castle over a period of five days during the Castle Freak Residency in November 2017.

Naptime at the O.K. Corral

Sally Campbell Galman ’96 recently released a book, Naptime at the O.K. Corral — Shane’s Beginner’s Guide to Childhood Ethnography (Routledge, 2018). This illustrated guide will orient the reader to the fundamental challenges in doing ethnographic research with children. The book begins by briefly exploring the history of research on children, with children, for children, and “by” children. Throughout, it is about doing research with children rather than on them, highlighting their participant rather than object nature.

On Middle Ground

Deborah R. Weiner ’79 is co-author of On Middle Ground: A History of the Jews of Baltimore (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018). This comprehensive history of Baltimore’s Jewish community reveals how the city’s position between North and South profoundly shaped Jewish economic, social, and religious life. The book illuminates both Baltimore and its Jews, showing how each influenced the other.

Opening Words

Alan Goldfarb ’52 has published his third collection of poems, Opening Words: New and Selected Poems (Robertson Publishing, 2018).

Rooster Summer

During a summer spent on their grandparents’ farm, the brother and sister in this novel in verse collect eggs from the chicken coop, put on shows for city folks in passing trains, fill in for the farm dog by barking the cows home, and dance around the perfectly ripening watermelon growing in grandma’s garden. Rooster Summer (Groundwood, 2018) is based on the childhood of Robert Heidbreder ’69, an award-winning children’s poet and author. 

Art

Locales

Ethan Kenvarg ’12 and Caleb Neubauer ’13 released their debut EP Locales in May. They’re part of Ooraloo, a five-piece art rock group from Chicago. The five-track collection was produced in collaboration with Adam Thein ’10 and Katie In ’13 and recorded in Grinnell at the home of Jon Edwards, senior associate director of admission. Ooraloomusic.com