Why We're Here: New York Essayists on Living Upstate

by Bob Cowser Jr.

The geography of upstate New York (defined here as practically everything except Long Island and the city's five boroughs) is famously various -- the last ice age left the region wonderfully mountainous but also carved a Great Lake and several major rivers. Writers in this anthology reveal an interior landscape every bit as diverse, stretching contemporary literature's most flexible form so that these essays seem to hold everything -- laundromats and bowling alleys, organic and family farms, Amish-build shacks and backyard ice rinks and the Erie Canal. Yet these essayists always also speak from a region close to the heart, and the result is a rich chorus, a loving portrait of the place these writers call home.

219 pages, Paperback

First published December 17, 2010