Andrew Lawler, Why Did the Chicken Cross the World? The Epic Saga of the Bird That Powers Civilization. New York: Atria Books, 2014. Pp. 336, $26 hb. This summer my partner Virgil Benoit and I hosted a fête du champagne in the new chicken house on our farm in northwestern
Congratulations to our poetry editor (and friend Heidi Czerwiec) for her award winning essay “Nervous Systems.” It won first prize in the Baltimore Review’s competition for works on the body. Go read it here. Her poem explores the complex relationships with our body’s most-mysterious nervous system and the birth mother
On Monday, the nation took time to reflect on the legacy and significance of Martin Luther King, and it’s hard to avoid the feeling that our communities and leaders would be better if we would continue to reflect in a thoughtful way on King’s work throughout the entire year. One
This is the first in a new online series from North Dakota Quarterly called Short Takes. A few times a month, we’ll post a short reflection on a book, album, or film. We just released our special Through the Wormhole issue, exploring the intersections between art and science. A
The editors at North Dakota Quarterly have joined the world in mourning the death and celebrating the life of David Bowie. We defer to NPR’s Terry Gross in our reflection on Bowie’s achievement as both a musician and a cultural phenomenon. “We wanted to manufacture a new kind of
Perhaps no author is more closely associated with North Dakota Quarterly than Thomas McGrath. In recent years, his work as a definitive poet of the Northern Plains or the American West has received renewed interest and attention. Charlotte Mandel’s recent essay in Poets’ Quarterly captures the scope and tone of
As the Northern Plains fall under the grip of winter, I thought it would be nice to enjoy the winter colors of the Winter 1991 (59.1) by UND alumnus William Gay. The volume features stories by Dainis Hanzer and Sharon Pugh, a poem reflecting on the second decade of AIDS
Our managing editor Kate Sweney and our digital editor, Bill Caraher, joined the nice folks over at Prairie Public Radio’s Main Street to talk about the most recent volume of NDQ and some changes that we see in the future. Bill Thomas reads one of the poems and we explore
A couple years ago, two University of North Dakota faculty members, Brett Ommen and Joel Jonientz told the story of Christmas from a different perspective on their brilliant and tragically short-lived podcast, Professor Footnote. Because the internet remembers, it is still available for our listening. Take an hour or so
Congratulations to Scott Olsen whose “Nine Variations on the Idea of Street Music” appeared in this month’s Utne Reader. It originally appeared in North Dakota Quarterly 80.3. The articles looks at nine incidents of street music accompanied by a pair of vibrant black-and-white photographs. I won’t wreck the elegance of
