5 X Friday: MFA Alum Kate Hopper

When Kate Hopper (MFA 2005) reads from her new memoir Ready for Air: A Journey Through Premature Motherhood 7 pm October 23 at Subtext Bookstore, she'll be marking not only the book's publication but the 10-year anniversary of her daughter's premature birth in the fall of 2003. Both her daughter, Stella, and this memoir have thrived under Hopper's decade of care, with important assists from others (not forgetting husband). Hopper was able to work with her agent, Amy Burkhardt, twice--on this book and on her 2012 writing guide Use Your Words--before Burkhardt left that career. "Amy is a writer herself with an MFA in fiction, so she's a really smart reader," Hopper relates. "She helped me see that I had front-loaded back-story, and asked questions like, 'If the book is really about...do you need this?' I'm going to miss her!" Hopper's MFA student cohort and professors encouraged her as the manuscript was just beginning, in the years just after Stella was born. Read on.