Ona Gritz: Everywhere I Look
We are pleased to welcome local author Ona Gritz to discuss her new book Everywhere I Look.
Everywhere I Look is a a beautifully rendered memoir of sisterhood, longing, true crime, and family secrets. In 1982, twenty-five-year-old Angie Boggs, pregnant with her second child, was brutally murdered, along with her husband and infant son. Ill equipped for the horror of that violence and the enormity of her loss, Angie's sister Ona, a college sophomore, felt numb. She also felt deeply ashamed of her inability to grieve. But shame, like her sister's absence, was something Ona knew well. For as long as she could remember, she'd felt ashamed of being their parents' blatantly favored child. The disabled daughter they'd coddled and protected while they alternately punished and neglected Angie, and finally sent her away. It wasn't until thirty years after the murders, both their parents gone and Ona nearly twice the age Angie was allowed to reach, that she developed the courage and a detective's compulsion to learn all she could about her sister's turbulent life and unthinkable death. The result is a profoundly moving reckoning and love letter.
**Books will be available for purchase and signing at the event.**
- Date:
- Tuesday, May 14, 2024
- Time:
- 6:30pm - 7:30pm
- Time Zone:
- Eastern Time - US & Canada (change)
- Location:
- Adult Library
- Library:
- Swarthmore Public Library
- Audience:
- Adults New Adult Seniors
- Categories:
- Author Events Community Groups Lectures Other
Ona’s nonfiction has appeared widely, including in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Utne Reader, Brevity, Parents, The Rumpus, and River Teeth. Among her recent honors are two Notable mentions in The Best American Essays and A Best Life Story in Salon.
Ona’s poetry collection Geode was a finalist for the Main Street Rag Poetry Book Award. Her poems can be found in Ploughshares, The Bellevue Literary Review, One Art, Catamaran Literary Reader, Stone Gathering, SWWIM, Literary Mama, and elsewhere. In 2020, she won The Poetry Archive Now: Wordview 2020 Project.
Ona’s 2023 novel for children, August Or Forever, was a Reader’s Choice and Wishing Shelf finalist in middle grade fiction. Her picture book, Tangerines and Tea, My Grandparents and Me, was named Best Alphabet Book of 2005 by Nick Jr. Family Magazine, and a Best Book of the Year by Scholastic Parent & Child Magazine. The Space You Left Behind, her first young adult novel, written in verse, is forthcoming from West 44 Books in June 2024.
A columnist for Literary Mama for many years, Ona is currently the blog editor for Wordgathering. She lives with her husband, writer Daniel Simpson, near Philadelphia.
Contact
610-543-0436
swarthmore@swarthmorepubliclibrary.org
121 Park Avenue
Swarthmore PA 19081
Find out more at swarthmorepubliclibrary.org