Elizabeth Kadetsky's memoir First There Is a Mountain was published by Little Brown in 2004, and her fiction and personal essays have appeared widely, in the New York Times, the Pushcart Prizes anthology, Best New American Voices and elsewhere. She is visiting assistant professor in the MFA creative writing program at Penn State University. What’s defunct in her life? Paper reference tools. The Roget’s, cracked at the binding, sun-brittled and blurred at the words “interesting,” “irritating,” and “transcendent,” got sent to the spa last month, aka to The Strand Bookstore. What, exactly, does “defunct” mean anyway? Alas, she went to dictionary.com for her answer.
