BIOGRAPHY

Andrea’s most recent book is Radical Endurance: Growing Old in an Age of Longevity (University of Minnesota Press, 2024). Praised as “a personal guide to the transformations, hard truths, profound pleasures, and infinite possibilities of aging,” the book traces her journey into old age, including the choking fear of losing her health and with it, her independence; the profound pleasures of “growing up again” as she reconsiders experiences from young adulthood; and finally, her unexpectedly optimistic journey toward contentment as she contemplates her future.

Winner of an Honorable Mention from the Forward Indies 2023 Book Awards, After Effects: A Memoir of Complicated Grief (University of Minnesota Press, 2022) traces Andrea’s deeply personal struggle with abnormally intense and prolonged grief after the untimely death of her husband, ultimately leading to a profound reconsideration of what might constitute happiness in a life alone.

In 2020, Andrea was awarded a Next Step grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board’s Metropolitan Regional Arts Council to support After Effects, and in 2022, she was a featured writer in the Minnesota Humanities Center’s popular Minnesota Writers Series.

Andrea is also the author of Restoring Flexibility: A Gentle Yoga-Based Practice to Increase Mobility at Any Age (Ulysses Press, 2015), which received enthusiastic reviews from yoga, health, and wellness media and continues to find an appreciative audience.

Andrea is currently working on a travel memoir, “Somewhere Over the Rainbow: A Traveler’s Art Quest in Native America.” Between 1989 and 1998, she and her late husband and took eleven road trips to Native American nations in what is now Minnesota, North and South Dakota, and Montana. These trips allowed her to pursue her passionate interest in contemporary Native American beadwork made for sale to tourists, and over that decade she purchased about 180 exquisite, modestly priced beaded artworks. She is now actively working to “return” these beautiful objects to an appropriate Native American cultural organization.

In 2024 Andrea was awarded a professional development grant from the University of Minnesota Retirees Association. This funding allowed her to return to some of the most memorable places she and her husband visited so many years ago, and it has also enabled her to visit with staff at organizations that might be interested in housing her collection.

“Somewhere Over the Rainbow” narrates the often remarkable stories of how and where Andrea came to collect these artworks, including the resilient cultures and fraught histories of the people and places she visited. She thinks of her art quest as a magic carpet ride that allowed her to discover new places, meet a host of generous, talented people, and gain transformational insights into Native American arts, cultures, and lands. She is dedicating this memoir to the artists, both named and unnamed, whose work and lives she celebrates in “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.”

Andrea founded and directed LearningLife, the University of Minnesota’s diverse collection of learning opportunities for people in the second half of life, as well as Encore Transitions: Preparing for Post-Career Life, a trailblazing, nationally replicated program that offered a holistic approach to preparing for a meaningful life after retirement. These programs allowed her to develop an enduring professional and personal interest in health, well-being, and vital engagement in later life, concerns that have become foundational to her writing. 

As the founding director of the University of Minnesota’s legendary Split Rock Arts Program, Andrea led an internationally renowned series of intensive residential workshops in the literary and visual arts. During her tenure, she put cultural, racial, gender, and aesthetic diversity at the heart of the program by bringing groundbreaking writers and artists of color and pioneering LGBTQ+ artists to the program, and by offering program participants opportunities to learn non-European art forms from master practitioners.

In 1995, in collaboration with the University of Minnesota’s Department of American Indian Studies, Andrea also founded and directed American Indian Lives, Lands, and Cultures travel study tours to tribal nations. The program offered opportunities for members of participating tribal communities to create curriculum and serve as teachers in order to develop their capacity in intercultural tourism. This work grew from Andrea’s abiding interest in and passion for Native American art, especially contemporary beadwork created for sale to tourists.

Between 2010 and 2018, Andrea taught hundreds of yoga classes through her Third Age Yoga teaching practice, working with a wide variety of participants ranging from 45 to 98 years old. She taught exclusively in community-based nonprofit settings, including the West 7th Community Center and the Wilder Foundation Center for Aging, both located in Saint Paul, Minnesota, Andrea’s home town.