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 now finishing work on a travel memoir tentatively titled Somewhere Over the Rainbow: An Art Lover’s Life-Changing Journey into Native America. To support this work, she was awarded a 2024 professional development grant from the University of Minnesota Retirees Association. Here is an edited excerpt from the book’s introduction:

At its heart, Somewhere Over the Rainbow pays tribute to the contemporary Native American artists whose spectacular beaded artworks I collected during our travels, but none of what I have just told you would have been possible without the gift of love I received continuously and without qualification from my husband and travel companion, the late great Thomas Dayton.

Between 1989 and 1998, Tom and I made eleven road trips to the northern and southern Plains, the eastern front of the Rocky Mountains, and the high deserts and mountains of the continent’s southwest, as well as another dozen trips within our home state of Minnesota, which contains the homelands of most of the approximately 50,000 Native Americans who live here. Somewhere Over the Rainbow traces these journeys in loving and sometimes improbable detail, including what I hope are vivid but easy-to-read descriptions of some of the beaded artworks I purchased along the way. I hope that as you read, you might like to imagine that you are traveling with us, as I did during the several seasons I spent writing this memoir, and that you might feel, as we did, that you are traveling over the rainbow to embrace previously unknown realities.

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.