(Fennelly, Beth Ann) Beth Ann Fennelly is the author of three poetry collections, Unmentionables, Tender Hooks, and Open House; two memoirs, Heating & Cooling and Great with Child; and a novel, The Tilted World, coauthored with her husband, Tom Franklin. She teaches at the University of Mississippi, and is also the state’s Poet Laureate. The 52 micro-memoirs in her genre-defying Heating & Cooling (W. W. Norton & Company) offer bright glimpses into a richly lived life, combining the compression of poetry with the truth-telling of nonfiction into one heartfelt, celebratory book. Ranging from childhood recollections to quirky cultural observations, these stories build on one another to arrive at a portrait of Fennelly as a wife, mother, writer, and deeply original observer of life’s challenges and joys. Author Richard Ford writes, “What better can one writer say about another writer’s work? I wish I’d written it. Heating and Cooling is just that enviable.”
