Prof. Lili Wright Contributes Essay to Indianapolis Monthly
June 16, 2017
Lili Wright, professor of English at DePauw University, contributes a column to the June 2017 edition of Indianapolis Monthly magazine. The piece on a Putnam County taxidermist is the first entry in a new series Wright will pen called "Work," exploring interesting jobs in Indiana.
"When Joanna Suitors was debating a career in taxidermy, her mentor gave her a quick litmus test: If you can skin a deer, turn around, and eat lunch, you’ll be okay. And she could," Wright's essay begins. "For the past 25 years, Suitors, 56, has mounted some 4,000 animals at her one-woman business, Leatherman Creek Taxidermy in Greencastle. She has reconstructed elk, buffalo, sheep, raccoons, turkey, fish, squirrels, black bear, and wild boar, but now specializes in white-tailed deer. Unlike bigger operations, she does all the work herself and by hand."
Access the text at the publication's website.
Professor Wright's debut novel, Dancing with the Tiger, was selected by the Mystery Writers of America as a finalist for a 2017 Edgar Allan Poe Award. The Mark Gordon Company has acquired the feature film rights to Professor Wright's book.
"In her energetic debut novel, the sprawling literary thriller Dancing with the Tiger, Lili Wright straddles borders and genres," wrote Tayari Jones in a New York Times book review. Jones opined that Wright's book has "everything you could want in a summer caper."
Other glowing reviews of Dancing with the Tiger include those by Outside and the Washington Post. The book was also on a National Geographic list of "12 Travel Books to Read Before Summer Is Over."
A former journalist, Elizabeth D. "Lili" Wright, joined the DePauw faculty in 1999. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Esquire, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Sun. She previously authored the autobiographical Learning to Float: The Journey of a Woman, a Dog, and Just Enough Men (2002). Wright contributed an essay to the February 2017 edition of Good Housekeeping.