Winter Solstice

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of Wake Siren: Ovid Resung, a finalist for a LAMBDA LiteraryAward and the Massachusetts Book Award, the acclaimed memoir Hammer Head: The Making of a Carpenter, and the companion to Winter Solstice, Black Sparrow’s Summer Solstice. She lives in Cambridge,Massachusetts.

Praise for Winter Solstice2024 Mass Book Award for Nonfiction, Massachusetts Center for the Book“Arresting . . . MacLaughlin reminds us of our capacity for wonder, heightened in this season of quiet.” —Los Angeles Review of Books“Drawing on myths, memories, meteorology, and more, it makes a perfect companion for a frosty New England night.” —Boston Art Review, a “Holiday Gift Guide” pick “The narrative achieves a deeply cohesive, riveting quality, that at times directly engages the reader in collaboration and intrigue.” —The Brooklyn Rail“This book is beautiful, it’s a book that begs to be read aloud. The language is just gorgeous. There are pieces of it that I’ve returned to over and over again.”—Josh Christie, Maine Public Radio“Nina MacLaughlin returns to celebrate the winter solstice, and delivers a most sensual hymn and harbor for the human ability to feel our way through the darkness towards wise, unexpected connections. This ethereal collection offers us a candle at night—it’s an astonishing gift.” —Aimee Nezhukumatathil, author of World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments “Nina MacLaughlin stands shoulder to shoulder with such writers as José Emilio Pacheco and Fleur Jaeggy. In Winter Solstice we are invited into the impending dark, guided through our own, and in the end given just enough light to survive. MacLaughlin’s meditation is both universal and uncommonly distinct. An immense joy to read, Winter Solstice is not so much an essay as it is a vision.” —Matthew Dickman, author of Husbandry “Smart and lyrical—this book makes you feel alive.” —Nicholson Baker, author of The Anthologist