Newsweek Publishes Essay by Prof. Lili Wright

June 9, 2004

June 9, 2004, Greencastle, Ind. - An essay by Lili Wright, assistant professor of English at DePauw University, is published in the latest (June 14) issue of Newsweek. Professor Wright's column appears in the magazine's "My Turn" section and is headlined: "Spending Summers With 'Super Grampy'". The text notes that "Wright teaches creative writing at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana."

The piece begins, "After 86 years of living, my grandfather, a retired biochemistry professor, has worked out a few cardinal rules: Anything you can't cook in a microwave isn't worth making. Frozen vegetables are better than fresh. When it comes to the stock market, sell short, buy gold. Hot water is unnecessary. If you see something you like, buy two. Never throw anything away. I don't agree with any of this, but that doesn't stop me from living with him each summer on an island off the coast of Maine."

Wright, whose novel Learning to Float was published by Broadway Books two years ago (read more here), writes of the summers she, her husband (assistant professor of English Peter Graham) and their 4-year-old daughter share with her grandfather, a widower.

"Living with family requires patience and practice; the more we do it, the easier it becomes. If we don't make ourselves do it, we lose the knack entirely. And in that case, we always get our way, but we miss out on all our relatives have to teach us -- about how they live their lives and how we might better live our own. So when I ask my grandfather the purpose of a mysterious plastic pole with a clamp at one end, and he replies that it's a light-bulb changer for hard-to-reach sockets, I smile and nod. You can always squeeze one more thing in the closet."