BOOKS

ready for air by Kate Hopper

With candor, grace, and a healthy dose of humor, Kate Hopper takes us into the final weeks of her pregnancy, the “this-was-not-part-of-the-plan” first weeks of her daughter’s life in the NICU, and the isolated world she and her husband inhabited when they took their daughter home at the beginning of cold and flu season. Ready for Air is a testament to the power of motherhood and stories to transform lives.

Praise for Ready For Air

“There is no writer I’d rather follow this journey with than Kate Hopper. Her storytelling skills are stunning. You will be rooting for her and her new family all the way.”

Hope Edelman

New York Times bestselling author of Motherless Daughters

“After severe preeclampsia derails Kate Hopper’s birth plan, the author confronts her fears of preemie parenthood with brazen honesty and an occasional fitting expletive. Her memoir, a testament to the delights and uncertainties of motherhood, reads like a novel, though you won’t forget for a second that her story is true.”

Pregnancy & Newborn Magazine

“Hopper’s raw, hopeful memoir…is all paradox and ambiguity. Hopper takes us on an epic journey with her tiny baby—a stunning, breathless journey that shines with sincerity—and you’ll be so grateful that you came.”

Catherine Newman

author of Waiting for Birdy

“I had a hard time putting this book down.”

Judith Siers-Poisson

NPR - Wisconsin Public Radio

“Ready for Air looks unflinchingly at the psychological realities of learning to be a parent when other people are in a charge of a baby that can’t come home.”

MinnPost

“This [is a] beautiful, brave book. This story is sure to be a crucial one for parents of premature babies, but it’s also a book for anyone who has ever had her life go a bit askew. As Kate writes in her memoir, ‘I followed the rules, I did what I was told, and it didn’t matter.’ Parenting, after all, ends up being about learning how little you can control things.”

Mutha Magazine

“Ready for Air is a book of truths that pulls back the curtain on a rarely talked about experience—preeclampsia and premature birth—and strikes a universal truth about what it means to be female in today’s world.”

Writing Women’s Lives

“Hopper articulates the difficulties her family experienced but also shares the stories of others she encountered along the way with Stella. Hopper’s own words will appeal to others in similar straits.

Library Journal

“While [Ready for Air] is a birth story, it’s a human story as well, not neatly tied with pink and blue bows. In this new world of motherhood Kate must deal with self-doubt, disappointment, trepidation, and isolation, but also triumph and a new ferocious love.”

Reach, CLA, University of Minnesota

Use Your Words by Kate Hopper

Every woman has a story. What are the stories inside you that need to come out? In Use Your Words, Kate Hopper will guide you on your writing journey, honing your craft and experiencing how the process of writing helps us understand, make connections, and heal.

Praise for Use Your Words

“Part writing workshop, part anthology, part mothers’ group between two covers, Use Your Words is so much more than an instruction manual. It is also a readable, powerful call to the page for every woman in the process of giving birth to herself as a writer. If you have ever wondered whether motherhood is a viable literary subject, or whether you have a mothering story worth telling, Kate Hopper’s beautifully written book will answer that question once and for all – with compelling excerpts, exercises to inspire you, and clear, practical teachings on matters of voice, structure, and style.”

Katrina Kenison

author of The Gift of an Ordinary Day and Mitten Strings for God

“Kate Hopper’s Use Your Words demonstrates how the universal experiences of motherhood can be transformative through storytelling and offers practical, thoughtful, and insightful guidance to any writer interested in the process of translating life experience into story.”

Andrea Buchanan

author of The Daring Book for Girls, Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It

“Kate Hopper has been teaching writing for years, and she brings all her experience to bear in Use Your Words, a writing guide that’s a pleasure to read. The book is both deeply personal and quite rigorous, offering examples from a range of writers to illustrate how good writing works, plus targeted exercises to let readers practice their craft. Use Your Words will help any writer, beginning or experienced, reckon with the messy stuff of life and shape it into memoir.”

Caroline Grant

ormer Editor-in-Chief, Literary Mama, co-editor of Mama, PhD: Women Write About Motherhood and Academic Life and The Cassoulet Saved Our Marriage: True Tales of Food, Family, and How We Learn to Eat

“Use Your Words brings a unique voice to the world of writing guides: honest, forthright, funny. Reading it felt to me no different than sitting down to have a writing tete-a-tete with a literary friend and practicing writer. Because it is real, the voice welcomes beginners with trustworthy invitations to reach deep, and it also speaks to the practicing writer with new levels of insight about writing motherhood literature. It’s totally original in that it covers the specific areas where the experience of motherhood fires—and complicates—the task of writing. The true brilliance of Use Your Words is voice. When a teacher/author takes a risk with voice and really bares herself, her students/readers can do no less than rise to the same challenge. Also, the book is funny! I thought I was reading it just for fun, and the surprise for me was the spur in the ribs I got to write and write well.”

Bonnie J. Rough

author of Carrier: Untangling the Danger in My DNA & Beyond the Birds and Bees

“Hopper’s book is more than a book about writing motherhood stories and memoir; it is a valuable course in writing creative nonfiction and how to build dexterity with the writing craft.”

Sheila Bender

founder of Writing It Real and author of About a New Theology

Additional Works

Silent-Running-COVER

Silent Running, co-author

Running is a way of life for the Schneider family, but not in the same way as it is for most runners. Twin brothers Alex and Jamie Schneider have severe autism—they are nonverbal and when anxiety takes over they bite themselves or slam their feet into the hard floor, they cannot tell their mother Robyn if they are hurt or hungry, and they can never be left alone. Yet they have run almost 150 races, including six marathons. The boys’ parents have also turned to running to battle health issues: father Allan successfully manages his symptoms of multiple sclerosis with vitamins and miles and miles of jogging on the trails near their Long Island home, while mother Robyn, who, while undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer six years ago, laced up her own running shoes for the first time and headed out the door, determined to run her way to recovery. Silent Running is one family’s incredible story of triumph in the face of enormous hurdles, and of the shared passion that has fueled their fight. It is a story of hope and of never giving up.