Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss

When a seemingly routine medical procedure results in her mother's premature death, Anne Panning is left reeling. In her first full-length memoir, the celebrated essayist and short story writer draws on decades of memory and experience, piecing together hard truths about her own past and her mother's.

We follow Panning's winding path from rural Minnesota to the riverbanks of Vietnam's Mekong Delta. A stark, poignant tale of two women deeply connected, yet forever apart, Dragonfly Notes is a testament to the prevailing nature of love, whether in the form of a rediscovered note, a sudden moment of unexpected recall, or sometimes, simply, the sight a dragonfly flitting past.

Anne panning is the author of three previous fiction titles, most notably Super America (University of Georgia Press, 2007), which won the 2006 Flannery O'Connor Award for Short Fiction and was a New York Times Editor's Choice selection. Several of her nonfiction pieces have also been recognized in The Best American Essays series. Originally from rural Minnesota, Panning now lives in upstate New York with her husband, Mark, and two children, Hudson and Lily. She teaches creative writing at SUNY-Brockport, where she serves as Co-Director of The Brockport Writers Forum reading series, and is currently at work on her second memoir, Bootleg Barber Shop: A Daughter's Story, about her late father, a barber and an addict.