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In Praise of Inadequate Gifts

In Praise of Inadequate Gifts: A Memoir by Tarn Wilson

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Winner of the Wandering Aengus Book Award!

In her rich and diverse collection of essays, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts, Tarn Wilson guides us generously through both traumas and hard-earned joys, holding fast to “that quiet self at my hidden center.” Despite a childhood with a depressive mother who could descend into “quicksand darkness,” an absent father, the death of both parents within a year, and the dissolution of her own long marriage, Wilson holds on for a “sweeter” life. The gifts she offers her lucky readers are hardly inadequate. Whether her subjects are mountain lions or wisdom teeth or an old laundromat where she discovers “that strange, alternate universe which is grief,” her essays remind us that finally it is love that holds our world together, a “love that gives without even the memory of it, like breath.”
--Rebecca McClanahan, author of In the Key of New York City: A Memoir in Essays and The Riddle Song and Other Rememberings

In her memoir-in-essays, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts, Tarn Wilson explores the intricacies of grief, the possibility of survival, and the hard lessons we learn from life’s accumulating challenges. Told with a clear-eyed sensibility and a belief in the power of redemption, these essays are honest, powerful, and necessary.
--Dinty W. Moore, author of Between Panic & Desire

A good essayist, like a good scientist, proceeds by asking hard questions while refusing to settle for easy answers. In this rich collection, Tarn Wilson pursues a cluster of haunting questions: How can she recover from a chaotic childhood—her parents’ divorce, mentally ill mother, neglectful hippie father, abusive stepfather, periodic poverty, frequent uprooting from schools and homes? What brought on her own divorce? Why has she remained childless? Is there an afterlife? How has reading shaped her “moral center”? How has writing eased her grief?  Although Wilson draws on her personal history, these essays will surely resonate with readers who have faced their own hard questions.   
--Scott Russell Sanders, author of The Way of Imagination

The true gift of Tarn Wilson’s In Praise of Inadequate Gifts is this author’s compassion—toward herself, her family, her students, and the world. In a voice both companionable and smart, Wilson shows us how we can tell the stories that matter, even when our hearts have broken.
--Brenda Miller, author of An Earlier Life

The opening essay in Tarn Wilson's new collection is called “The History of My Teeth,” and I fell in love on the very first page. Tarn Wilson is an irresistible writer, and her new book, In Praise of Inadequate Gifts, is a treasure. Buy it, read it, and tell everyone you know.
--Abigail Thomas, author of What Comes Next and How to Like It



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Tarn Wilson is the author of the memoir The Slow Farm (Ovenbird Books: Judith Kitchen Select, 2014). Her personal essays appear in Brevity, Harvard Divinity Bulletin, J Journal, River Teeth, Ruminate, South Loop Review, and The Sun, among others, and have been reprinted in anthologies, such as The Prentice Hall Reader. She earned an MA in education from Stanford University and an MFA in creative writing from the Rainier Writing Workshop. In addition to being a high school teacher, she is the founder of Creator School, which offers writing courses for teens and adults.

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  • Home
  • Books
    • Poetry >
      • An Altar of Tides
      • Dor
      • Empire of Surrender
      • Feeding Hour
      • Firmament
      • Gunner
      • House of Sound
      • In the House of Modern Upbringing for Girls
      • It Wasn't Easy to Reach You
      • Learning to Hold
      • Passings
      • Tales of a Distance
      • Vanish
      • When I Say the Bones I Mean the Bones
      • Wild Silence
    • Fiction & Nonfiction >
      • The Beloved Republic
      • Broken Open
      • Child of Earth and Starry Heaven
      • Fertile Ground
      • For Love of Orcas
      • Going Feral
      • In Praise of Inadequate Gifts
      • The Last Year
      • The Longitude of Grief
      • Meditations for a New Century
      • The Misconceiver
      • Slow Learner
      • Studio of the Voice
      • YUCK
  • Authors
  • About
  • News
  • Submissions
  • Events