7pm-8:30pm ET/ 5pm-6:30pm MT

In this Essay Daily Salon conversation moderated by Ander Monson, Kati Standefer and Kelly Sundberg talk about how they got from publishing an essay—and receiving some attention for it—to landing with an agent and selling (then publishing!) a book. Although this conversation is free, you must RSVP to receive the zoom link.

Katherine E. Standefer is the author of Lightning Flowers: My Journey to Uncover the Cost of Saving A Life, forthcoming from Little, Brown Spark on November 10, 2020. Lightning Flowers was named one of O, The Oprah Magazine’s Best Books of Fall 2020, was featured in People Magazine and on NPR’s Fresh Air, and received a Kirkus starred review. Lightning Flowers tells the story of the author’s troubled relationship to her own implanted cardioverter defibrillator within the context of the American healthcare system, and her global journey to understand what it costs to save one Western life. Her writing appeared in The Best American Essays 2016 and won the 2015 Iowa Review Award in Nonfiction. Standefer earned her MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Arizona in 2014. She is currently a professor in Ashland University's Low-Residency MFA program.

Kelly Sundberg's essays have appeared in Alaska Quarterly Review, Guernica, Gulf Coast, Gay Magazine, Denver Quarterly, Slice Magazine, and others. Her essay "It Will Look Like a Sunset" was selected for inclusion in Best American Essays 2015, and other essays have been listed as notables in the same series. She has a PhD in Creative Nonfiction from Ohio University, and she has been the recipient of fellowships or grants from Vermont Studio Center, A Room of Her Own Foundation, Dickinson House, and The National Endowment for the Arts. She is currently at work on a collection of lyric essays about PTSD, single parenting, and magic. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Ashland University and teaches as part of the Ashland University Creative Writing MFA. She lives in Columbus, Ohio with her son.