Bookshelf

Lost Orchard II: Nonfiction from the Kirkland College Community edited by Isabel Weinger Nielsen K’76

March 1, 2022

Tags Alumni Book Kirkland College Alumna

(Washington, D.C.: National League of American Pen Women, 2021).
This collection of 45 essays by Kirkland College alumnae, faculty, and administrators addresses subjects as wide-ranging as aging, loss, parenting, feminism, place, and the Kirkland experience.

Kirkland, the last private women’s college created in the United States, merged with Hamilton in 1978. The college fostered independent learning and creativity, with academic disciplines such as American studies, visual arts, dance, and history of science. Kirkland also offered one of the first undergraduate creative writing majors at a four-year college. Lost Orchard II captures the reflections and talents of those who knew it best.

“This collection of writing is a window into the minds and souls of the women Kirkland students became,” Christie Bell Vilsack K’72 notes. “What we did in the years we spent together is reflected in the words collected here. I read every word with the growing awareness that what we created together — founders, teachers, students, administrators — in rural upstate New York during the 12 years Kirkland existed, changed the trajectory of our lives and the many we’ve touched.”

This book follows Lost Orchard: Prose and Poetry from the Kirkland College Community (SUNY Press, 2014), which featured a diverse collection of poems, short stories, novel excerpts, creative nonfiction, and one-act plays by the Kirkland community. All proceeds from the sale of Lost Orchard II support the Samuel & Natalie Babbitt Kirkland Scholarship Fund.

* Special thanks to associate editors Nancy Avery Dafoe K’74, P’04, Liz Horwitt K’73, and Jo Pitkin K’78. Cover illustration by Linda Branch Dunn K’77.

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