i know about a thousand things: the writings of ann alejandro of uvalde, texas

Struggling for 30 years with chronic illness at her ranch outside Uvalde, Texas, Ann Alejandro was a writer of transporting natural talent and prolificity. Though she would have loved to be widely read and appreciated, she was too modest to scale the walls of the publishing world. Thus her chosen form was the letter and her audience close friends and family, including the poet Naomi Nye and the essayist Marion Winik. For decades, her often lengthy missives continued to delight her correspondents, blending observation, storytelling, humor, praise, and accounts of her deep attachment to the land and animals that surrounded her in the rural Southwest.

Before Ann’s death in 2019 at the age of 64, Naomi and Marion promised her they would pull together a book from thousands of pages left in their care. They selected the very best of Ann Alejandro, added commentary, and organized the material into chapters with titles like Faith, Motherhood, Land, Snakes, Pain, and Love.

I Know About a Thousand Things: The Writings of Ann Alejandro of Uvalde, Texas is an extraordinary collection of writing put together by two longtime literary friends in tribute to a third. It includes an introduction by Nye and and an afterword by Winik, as well as a photo gallery of Ann’s life. It will delight and enrich readers for years to come.

NAOMI SHIHAB NYE teaches creative writing at Texas State University in San Marcos. The author of more than thirty volumes of poetry, essays, and short fiction, including 19 Varieties of Gazelle: Poems of the Middle East; I’ll Ask You Three Times, Are You Okay?: Tales of Driving and Being Driven; and There Is No Long Distance Now: Very Short Stories, she was inducted into the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021.MARION WINIK, author of Highs in the Low Fifties, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead, Rules for the Unruly, and other books, is an essayist and occasional commentator for National Public Radio. She is an assistant professor of creative nonfiction at the University of Baltimore.