~ Leia DeMarco LaBarbiera
On Wednesday, October 21st, in Pope Auditorium at the Lincoln Center campus, the Fordham English Department hosted its annual Mary Higgins Clark Keynote event, featuring 2026 Chair, author and poet, Aimee Nezhukumatathil. This series, made possible by the contributions of late best–selling author and Fordham alumna, Mary Higgins Clark, highlights an exemplary figure from the literary community each year, inspiring English students and professors alike. Every year, the program consists of an opening presentation by the speaker followed by a moderated Q&A section and book–signing.
The event began as Sarah Gambito, Co–Director of the Creative Writing Program, made opening remarks and introduced Nezhukumatathil to the audience, highlighting her many career accomplishments.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of Night Owl, a poetry collection, the book of food essays Bite By Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, and the New York Times best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments. She has also written four previous poetry collections including Oceanic and At The Drive-in Volcano. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. She has received honors including a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, NAAEE’s 2024 Pepe Marcos-Iga Award for Innovation in Environmental Education, and was named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. For a decade, she served as the poetry editor for both Orion and Sierra Magazines and has since worked as a professor of English and Creative Writing for over twenty five years.
Throughout the program, Nezhukumatathil provided context around the subject matters she chooses to explore throughout her extensive catalog. Specifically, she shared her motivations for focusing on nature writing, noting her fascination with medical textbooks from a young age—a product of her parents’ desire to see her become a doctor. Though Nezhukumatathil initially pursued pre–med in college, she decided to declare a major in English with a speciality in both poetry and creative non–fiction, ultimately bridging her cross–disciplinary passions. She recalled how this decision required perseverance but provided possibility, making her feel alive, utterly connected to the world around her. How she imagined a pebble toad may feel, for instance, rolling down a hill to ensure a foreign type of safety.
Nezhukumatathil also focused on developing themes explored in World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments, which, aside from being a New York Times bestseller, was also a Barnes and Noble Book of the Year, NPR Best Book of 2020 and Kirkus Prize Finalist for Nonfiction. In concluding the book, Nezhukumatathil comes to the realization that “[i]t is this way with wonder: it takes a bit of patience, and it takes putting yourself in the right place at the right time. It requires that we be curious enough to forgo our small distractions in order to find the world.” While the cultivation of wonder can be a time–consuming process, Nezhukumatathil stresses the necessity of its practice, especially in a world as overwhelming as ours. Too often we find ourselves drained by the demands and disappointments of the everyday. World of Wonders reminds us that gratitude can be a powerful tool in combatting our own disillusionment.
During the Q&A segment, Nezhukumatathil provided insight into her own personal process of seeking out wonder in the world, adding that she currently serves as a firefly guide for Mississippi State Parks where she enjoys the opportunity to watch a rare swarm of synchronous fireflies during the summer months. For Aimee Nezhukumatathil, then, nature is a place of joy and belonging, which is especially important considering that many marginalized identities were historically made to feel excluded from these spaces.
After the program, students gathered to have their copies of World of Wonders signed and receive some gifts from Nezhukumatathil herself, including a glow-in-the-dark firefly figurine to remind them of the importance of natural wonder in their lives.
