This is Michelle Wildgen’s bio: She lives in Madison, Wisconsin. She grew up in Stow, Ohio, where she frequently skipped church and went out for cheeseburgers at Swenson’s drive-in instead. She would like to think the state remembers her fondly. She’s pretty sure the drive-in does. She attended the University of Wisconsin, worked for a cheese newspaper and several restaurants, wrote about food and books, got married, and developed a catastrophic shellfish allergy.

Michelle is the author of You’re Not You, one of my favorite books of 2006 and her second novel, A Little Light, will be published next year. She’s a senior editor at Tin House magazine so send her your best work, but don’t tell her I sent you.
I’ve asked Michelle what she’s reading. It’s not the most uplifting selection, especially for us parents, but life isn’t always uplifting now is it? Here’s what Michelle had to say…

Hey Kaui,
A few days ago I read Ann Hood’s memoir about the sudden death from a strep infection of her five year old daughter, called Comfort, and I’m still reeling from it. I’m having the odd sensation of trying to distance myself from a painful book, trying to pretend that it was “just” a novel, and not nonfiction, but of course it isn’t fiction. It’s slim, concentrated, full of love, full of intense sadness. What was so painful to me was how clear her little girl, Gracie, was–there was no comforting sensation for the reader that a slightly generalized character can give you, the little hints that this is not as painful as it should be because the person on the pages doesn’t seem quite like a real person, but an everyperson. And I didn’t feel that here–I felt clear as a bell that it was this little girl, only this particular girl, who was here and now is not. I don’t know if a lot of parents could really bear to read it, though it is beautifully written and it does have some sense of learning to live with this terrible thing. It’s hard to tell people to read something that will wring you out the way this book has wrung me out, but I’ll say it anyway.

Thank you, Michelle! And thank you, Ann Hood, for writing this book.

Watchu Reading Malena Watrous?
Watchu Reading Julia Scheers?
How to Live This Weekend (according to Laura Fraser)

That’s all