Bonnie Jo Campbell Exhibit @ Kalamazoo Valley Museum

Award-winning local author Bonnie Jo Campbell brings her history, as well as many personal items from her writing world, to the Kalamazoo Valley Museum in a mini-exhibit that showcases “What It Means to Be a Hometown Writer.” Bonnie was born in 1962 in Comstock, Michigan, and grew up on a small farm with her mother, Susanna, and four siblings (and neighbors and cousins) in a house her grandfather Herlihy built in the shape of an H.

Her first collection of stories, Women & Other Animals, won the Grace Paley Prize in 1999, and her book Q Road was a Barnes & Noble Best New Writers selection. Her next novel, American Salvage, was a National Book Award Finalist and won a National Book Critics Circle award. Once Upon a River, released in 2011, was a national bestseller now published in nine languages and has been adapted to film. Her new novel, The Waters, takes place in a Southwest Michigan swamp and was chosen for Oprah’s list of Most Anticipated Books of 2024, the Saturday Evening Post Ten Reads for the New Year, and the Apple Books List.

The exhibit, through photos, awards, souvenirs from her travels, and other items, showcases her work as well as her inspirations for writing.