"Just in time for Mother's Day, the community is invited to hear celebrated literary women share intimate stories about their mothers," notes event organizer and the college's Director of Alumni Relations, Michael Wall.

Kysar, the author of "Dark Lake," has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Norcroft, the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, and the Banfill-Locke Center for the Arts. This is the first book she has edited for publication.

"The book as a whole weaves together diverse voices to explore one of the most common and complex human experiences, being a daughter," Kysar says. "Alternately tender and tormented, admiring and forgiving, these artfully told personal narratives never underestimate the strength and strangeness of this bond."

Critics have called the 248-page book a disarmingly honest and poignant collection of stories of startling candor and rich insight, revealing hard work and hardship, successes and failures, love and anger between mothers and daughters by a group of America's celebrated literary women.

Kysar will be joined at the event by Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, author of "Swinging on the Garden Gate, Writing the Sacred Journey: The Art and Practice of Spiritual Memoir" and "On the Threshold: Home, Hardwood, and Holiness," a collection of personal essays; and Susan Steger Welsh, recipient of a Minnesota State Arts Board fellowship and a SASE/Jerome fellowship. Her first poetry collection, "Rafting on the Water Table," was a finalist for a Minnesota Book Award.

Other contributors to the collection include: Jonis Agee, Sandra Benitez, Barrie Jean Borich, Taiyon Coleman, Heid Erdrich, Diane Glancy, Jan Zita Grover, Denise Low, Alison McGhee, Sheila O'Connor, Shannon Olson, Carrie Pomeroy, Susan Power, Sun Yung Shin, Faith Sullivan, Ann Ursu, Ka Vang, Wang Ping and Morgan Grayce Willow.

For more information or to RSVP to the event, contact Wall at alumni@anokaramsey.edu or 763-433-1597.