Brenda Miller to read at Village Books April 15

Brenda Miller, a professor of English at Western Washington University, will read from and sign her book "An Earlier Life" at 7 p.m. Friday, April 15, at Village Books in Bellingham.

Whether traveling from synagogue to sweat lodge, from the Arizona desert to a communal hot springs in California, in her latest book Miller navigates the expectations placed on young girls and women at every turn. She finds guidance in her four major creeds (Judaism, Home Improvement, the Grateful Dead, and Rescue Dogs), while charting a course toward an authentic life. Each stage demands its own form, its own story, sometimes as a means of survival: “No straight line between here and there, between past and future; instead, many small rifts open between where you stand now and where you are trying to go.”

Brenda Miller is the author of four previous essay collections: "Who You Will Become," "Listening Against the Stone," "Blessing of the Animals" and "Season of the Body." She also co-authored "Tell It Slant: Creating, Refining and Publishing Creative Nonfiction" and "The Pen and The Bell: Mindful Writing in a Busy World." Her work has received six Pushcart Prizes.