Laura Kasischke
Schuler Books Eastwood
2820 Towne Center Blvd., Lansing
Jan. 21, 7 p.m.
schulerbooks.com, (517) 316-7495

Long before there was the Swine Flu, there was the Black Death. For author Laura Kasischke, that's where her latest novel, In a Perfect World, all began.

She had been reading about the Black Death and was most drawn to anecdotal asides and wondered, "What if something like that were to happen here? How would people react?"

Her questions prompted her to explore the panic and choices made when characters are confronted with the fictional Phoenix flu.

"Generally I have an image, a character, a season, a conflict I mind," Kasischke said. (For the record, she began writing before the H1N1 epidemic.)

As with the majority of her novels, In a Perfect World has a strong woman protagonist.

"My novels have all had domestic female centered stories but all with something violent with a major conflict...almost every one has a murder," notes Kasischke.

Boy Heaven and Feathered are young adult novels, though admittedly Kasischke wrote only one of the two for that audience.

"I was just writing a novel," she says. "I didn't specifically have in mind that I was writing for teenagers."

However, Feathered was written a year later, in 2008, with a target audience.

"I did have in mind especially teenage girls and their concerns, the experience and adventures of girls and how much more circumscribed their adventures have been."

Kasischke categorizes her novels as domestic thrillers. The October release of In a Perfect World is her seventh novel; Suspicious River was her first published novel in 1997 with White Bird in a Blizzard coming two years later. The Life Before her Eyes was published in 2002 and developed into a 2008 movie starring Uma Thurman and Evan Rachel Wood. Be Mine was published in 2007.

In addition to writing novels, Kasischke is also a poet and was actually a poet first. Poetry was her initial inclination, and she has published six collections of her work. Her writings have received the Juniper Prize, the Alice Fay di Castagnola Award from the Poetry Society of America, the Elmer Holmes Bobst Award for Emerging Writers, several Pushcart Prizes and the Beatrice Hawley Award.

"With poetry, I very much wait for some sort of inspiration," Kasischke says. "With novels, it's just too long a process to have it thought out before I start...I write, write, write, write, write."

A main difference she cites between writing poetry and writing a novel is the energy level required.

"I can't work at something for three years with a high level of intensity," Kasischke explains. Writing poetry involves a kind of in-the-moment force while "everything gets into a novel," she notes. "The radio I hear, the newspaper I read: it all gets in there." Poetry seeks much more to single out and capture an inspired thought.

Kasischke is a professor at the University of Michigan as well as a wife and mother, so she does her best to find time to dedicate to writing.

"I try to write every day," she says. "Some days I don't write, some days I only have 10 minutes to write. I try to keep steadily interacting with it [because] if I let it go, it's much harder to get back to it."

Kasischke is currently working on a novel with two young male characters, though female characters are still at the heart of it. Her awards and continued career indicate that she follows her own advice to "write what you can and what you know."

Other Literary Events:

Unpacking Collections: The Legacy of Cuesta Benberry
Michigan State University Museum, East Lansing
Jan. 1-31; hours vary
museum.msu.edu, (517) 355-2370

African American quilt scholar Cuesta Benberry was one of America's foremost experts in quilting. She wrote for a small quilting magazine in Oklahoma before writing for Quilter's Newsletter, at the time, the only magazine like it. Benberry was also an important collector, and the exhibition through September allows visitors to examine a selection of her textiles, rare books, personal journals, correspondence and research files.

Hawaiian Luau
Williamston Library, Williamston
Jan. 23, 12:30 p.m.
cadl.org, (517) 655-9253

Escape the blustery chills of winter and come to the library for a Hawaiian luau. Aimed for young children, this program will remind people of all ages that somewhere in the world, it's warm and sunny. Let Hawaiian themed games, snacks and stories entertain and distract you from dreary Michigan and maybe even learn something new.