Inara Verzemnieks

Inara Verzemnieks is the author of the memoir, Among the Living and the Dead (W.W. Norton, 2017), which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice and one of The Times (of London) Best Books of 2018.  A Pushcart Prize winner, as well as a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in feature writing, she previously worked as a newspaper journalist for thirteen years. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Tin House, and The Iowa Review.  She is an assistant professor in the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction Writing Program, where she also earned her MFA.

The Value of Support

"I will never forget the surge of joy I felt when I learned of my award. There is something so precious about the gift of belief—it is quite possibly the greatest gift of all because it can help us to see what we are capable of, maybe even before we realize it ourselves. Up to that point, my book had felt very tentative, a fragile little ember cupped in my palm. That someone believed in what I was doing enough to give me a way to make time and space for my book—it changed the way I saw myself and my project."