Today we’ll talk with writer Lizzie Stark about her new book, EGG: A Dozen Ovatures. She says the egg is a paradox—both alive and not alive—and a symbol as old as culture itself. From Mali to Finland, mythologies around the globe have invested the egg with powers of regeneration and fecundity, often ascribing the origin of the world to a cosmic egg. An oracle to Romans, fought over by Gold Rush gangs, used as the foundation of the Clown Egg Registry, and blasted into space. Lizzie Stark also weaves in her personal experiences, exploring her fraught relationship to the eggs in her body due to a familial link to cancer, and shares her delight in becoming a mother.
Lizzie Stark is a participation designer and the author of two previous nonfiction books, Pandora’s DNA and Leaving Mundania. Her writing has been featured in The Washington Post, Daily Beast, io9, and Philadelphia Inquirer, among other publications. Her prize-winning game design and facilitation work has been shown at festivals such as Indiecade, Stockholm Fringe Festival, and the Future of Storytelling. She holds an MS in journalism from Columbia University and an MFA in fiction writing from Emerson College.
