Kevin Brockmeier kicks off Good Thunder 

A new academic year has kicked off the Good Thunder Reading Series where its mission is to share literature, inspire creativity and create dynamic conversations about why writing matters.  

And to fully promote that goal among the MSU community, the series invites several acclaimed writers from diverse backgrounds and literary traditions to campus, where they lead a workshop, host a craft talk and close their visit to Mankato by giving an evening reading followed by a book signing. 

The series’ first guest author was Kevin Brockmeier who visited campus Thursday and shared his passion for writing with the student and faculty community throughout the day. 

Since he was a young boy, Brockmeier grew up as a devoted reader, saying what he “loved more than anything else was books.” 

“I loved science fiction and fantasy, and I loved comic books, and as soon as I could put sentences together, I began writing stories of my own, and I’ve gone on to write professionally, I think because I have a very intimate relationship with some of the books that I’ve read,” Brockmeier said. “The best of them allow me to feel that I’m living at the very center of my life. And so I’ve tried to make a career for myself that places me in conversation with those books that have been so important to me.”

With his books translated into 18 different languages and broadly considered as mainstream literary fiction, Brockmeier says his work also contains elements of fantasy or science fiction and that his books are both “going to speak to people who like to read literary fiction, but also people who like to read in those genres.” 

“My best known novel is called ‘The Brief History of the Dead,’ and that one is in two threads. It’s an end of the world book, but one of its threads takes place in the afterlife, and it’s specifically a medium place. It’s an afterlife for the dead, but not yet forgotten. So the idea is that once you pass away, you move into this transitional zone; a city and you remain there as long as somebody who’s alive remembers you,” Brockmeier said. “And then once you’ve been forgotten, you move on to whatever comes next. And most of my books are rooted in ideas like that; kind of fantastic notions that felt to me as if they were freighted with import or feeling in some way.”

His recent published work, “The Ghost Variations,” is a collection of 100 short ghost stories where all of them “involve investigations of ghostliness or souls or the afterlife in some way or another.”

“It was an attempt to fill a book with unusual ghost stories. A few of them have that campfire tale and so they feel spooky and haunted. But some of them are about ghosts as a metaphor, and they allow me to talk about anything I happen to be interested in, like time or animals or childhood or love through the lens of ghostliness,” Brockmeier said. 

Having now published nine books, Brockmeier shared what works he developed a deeper connection to throughout the writing process. 

“‘The Illumination,’ which is a book about what happens to the world and to six particular characters, when people who are in pain begin to generate light so that you can see when the people around you are suffering. And that was a book that emerged out of a long period of my own ill health, and so it allowed me to speak about the difficulties of physical suffering and try to grapple with that,” Brockmeier said. 

“I’ve written one book that’s much more autobiographical than anything I’ve written. It’s called ‘A Few Seconds of Radiant Filmstrip,’ and it’s a memoir about my seventh grade year of school. Begins on the first day of that school year and ends on the last day of that school year, and I’m trying to recreate the boy that I used to be when I was that age, and surround myself in the circumstances that I used to possess.”

Brockmeier said that one of his biggest inspirations for his literary work is Italian writer and journalist Italo Calvino whom he shared quotes from during the workshop and named the latter’s book “The Baron in the Trees,” as one of his ten favorite novels. 

“Among all of these writers, there’s one named Italo Calvino. He was a 20th century Italian novelist who brought a sense of great feeling and play to the literary fantastic. And for me, he is one of the great shining lights of 20th century literature. I would love to think that people who enjoy his books would enjoy my books too.” Brockmeier said. 

For more information about Brockmeier and his published books, visit kevinbrockmeier.com

Photo Caption: The Good Thunder Reading Series’ first guest author was Kevin Brockmeier who visited campus Thursday and shared his passion for writing with the MSU student and faculty community throughout the day. (Alexis Darkow/The Reporter) 

Write to Anahi Zuniga at anahi.zuniga@mnsu.edu