Why I’m (Still) Not Sorry I Voted For Nader
This piece was first published as one of my “Girl Next Door” columns in the Iowa City/Cedar Rapids ICON, 23 November 2000. While many things I’ve written in the past…
Little Women
Yesterday Steve posted that he’d seen the new Little Women movie and liked it, and I wrote that I had too much to say to respond on my phone. Reader,…
Dear Elizabeth Wurtzel
I’m so sorry I never got to write to you. I thought about it a million times. I wrote about you (or rather about your work) in one of the…
The Rev. Dr. Dr. Judith Crossett, Professor Emeritus
Edited and slightly expanded, these are the extemporaneous remarks I made about my mother at the 2019 University of Iowa Department of Psychiatry retirement party last month. My mother was…
Statement to the Iowa City Community School District Board
Thank you for the opportunity to speak this evening, and for the hard and unglamorous work that you all do as school board members. My name is Laura Crossett, and…
Martin Luther King Jr. Day 2018
I organized the second annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day celebration at my library. You can see some video of the whole thing, thanks to participant Meghann Foster. Here are…
2017
2017 was the year that people started telling you to call your senators. If you had already called them, you should call them again, and again. It was unclear how…
On Garrison Keillor
There are a lot of Garrison Keillor haters on my Facebook feed. I knew that was true even before he was cut loose by Minnesota Public Radio due to allegations…
On the News #52essays2017 no. 20
These days my phone sends me only two kinds of news alerts — reports of mass shootings and reports of new allegations of sexual harassment or assault. (We know a…
An Introduction to Roxane Gay
Each year my library hosts the presentation of the Paul Engle Prize and I write an introduction to the prizewinner. This year’s event is this Thursday, October 12 and we’ll…