In her debut essay collection, New Zealand native Toni Nealie examines journeys, homelands, family, and motherhood. She details humiliating confrontations with airport security, muses on the color brown, and intimately investigates her grandfather's complicated and criminal past, all while hearkening home—wherever and whatever that is. For this event, Toni will be joined by special guest, local essayist, Peggy Shinner. Toni Nealie is a writer, journalist, and teacher. Her work has appeared in Guernica, the Offing, the Rumpus, and the Prague Review. She worked in magazines, politics, and public relations in the United Kingdom and her native New Zealand before moving to the United States—two weeks before 9/11. Peggy Shinner is the author of You Feel So Mortal: Essays on the Body. Her work has appeared in the Southern Review, TriQuarterly, and Another Chicago Magazine, among other journals and anthologies. She has been awarded two Illinois Arts Council Fellowships and residencies at the Ucross and Ragdale foundations. She teaches in the MFA program at Northwestern University. A life-long Chicagoan, she lives there with her partner, designer and book artist Ann Tyler.
