Anne Panning ’87 returned to campus Wednesday, Sept. 26, in the Gundale Chapel to do a book reading and signing of her new memoir, “Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss.”
Faculty, staff, students, family, and friends of Anne were present and were able to ask questions about her writing as well as get their new copies signed. Anne was an English major at Augsburg and is now an English professor at The College at Brockport, State University of New York.
About the Book
When a seemingly routine medical procedure results in her mother’s premature death, Anne Panning is left reeling. In her first full-length memoir, the celebrated essayist draws on decades of memory and experience as she pieces together the hard truths about her own past and her mother’s.
We follow Panning’s winding path from rural Minnesota to the riverbanks of Vietnam’s Mekong Delta and all the way back again—a stark, poignant tale of two women deeply connected, yet somehow forever apart. Dragonfly Notes is a testament to the prevailing nature of love, whether in the form of a rediscovered note, a sudden moment of unexpected recall, or sometimes, simply, the sight a dragonfly flitting past.