Laura Pritchett – författare

Never mind the Ph.D. and middle-class trappings - Laura Pritchett is a Dumpster diver and proud of it. Ever since she was old enough to navigate the contents of a metal bin, she has reveled in the treasures found in other people's cast-offs.For Going Green, Pritchett has gathered the work of more than twenty writers to tell their personal stories of Dumpster diving, eating road kill, salvaging plastic from the beach, and forgoing another trip to the mall for the thrill of bargain hunting at yard sales and flea markets. These stories look not just at the many ways people glean but also at the larger, thornier issues dealing with what re-using - or not - says about our culture and priorities.The essayists speak to the joys of going beyond the norm to save old houses, old dishwater, old cultures, old Popsicle sticks, and old friendships - and turning them into something new. Some write about gleaning as a means of survival, while others see the practice as a rejection of consumerism or as a way of treading lightly on the earth.Brimming with practical and creative new ways to think about recycling, this collection invites you to dive in and find your own way of going green.

A young woman who offers to raise her teenage sister’s baby gets more than she bargained for in “a moving story about love, duty, and family” (Publishers Weekly).A supermarket clerk in a small dusty Colorado town, twenty-two-year-old Libby is full of dreams but lacks the means to pursue them. When her younger sister Tess becomes pregnant, Libby convinces her not to have an abortion by promising to raise the child herself. But then Tess takes off after the baby is born and Libby finds that her new role puts her dreams that much further away.Her already haphazard life becomes ever more chaotic. The baby’s father, a Christian rodeo rider, suddenly demands custody. Libby loses her job, her boyfriend abandons her, and her own mother harps on how stupid she was to make that promise to Tess. Worse, her sister’s reckless new life could put Libby herself in danger. Not just a story of a single mother overcoming obstacles, Sky Bridge is a complex novel from a PEN Award winner that leaves readers with a fresh understanding of what it means to inhabit a world in which dreams die, and are sometimes reborn.“In this spare yet haunting portrait of the American West, Pritchett’s powerful, poetic voice speaks with clarity, wisdom, and passion about country, family, and one young woman’s majestic spirit.” —Booklist“A superb writer.” —Library Journal