This week, our friends over at The Digital Press at the University of North Dakota and in the Department of English at UND are marking the 20th anniversary of the Red River Flood of 1997 by publishing a book that looks back on the impact and memory of this flood on Grand Forks, ND: Haunted by Waters: the Future of Memory and the Red River Flood of 1997 edited by Dr. David Haeselin.
Here’s a bit of the blurb on the book:
The book emerged from a year long course in the University of North Dakota’s Writing, Editing, and Publishing Program led by Dr. David Haeselin. Students in this course compiled, organized, and edited unpublished archival documents from the Orin G. Libby Manuscript Collection in the Elwyn B. Robinson Special Collections of the Chester Fritz Library at the University of North Dakota with new contributions from citizens and experts who lived through the flood and the region’s recovery. The archival inclusions include government documents, student journalism, blueprints, design plans, and transcribed 911 calls. In pairing new stories with these archival documents, the student editors and I hope to inspire new discussions about how the city got to where it is today, so that more people can join the larger civic conversation about the right steps forward for the city, the state, the region, and our nation.
For those of you in the Grand Forks area, a book release event is scheduled for Thursday, April 20 at 6:00 p.m. at Rhombus Guys Brewing Company, 116 S. Third Street. This release is being planned in coordination with the city of Grand Forks’ twentieth anniversary observation. At this event, student editors will discuss their experiences editing the book and how building their sense of memory about the flood has changed the way they see Grand Forks and the University.
The book will be available for download tomorrow from The Digital Press website and for purchase via Amazon.com on May 1.
North Dakota Quarterly 