About the Book:

In this new collection Toren explores the musicality of personal life in essays describing the spirit of the pre-dawn gloaming, the allure of half-forgotten childhood memories, the wisdom of Tin Pan Alley, and the anxieties and satisfactions of singing in a choir. An ebullient energy animates both the book's lyrical prose and the author's breezy, conversational approach to his chosen themes.

About the Author: 

Author John Toren's essays and reviews have appeared in a variety of publications, including Minnesota Monthly, the History Channel Magazine, the Star-Tribune, Rain Taxi, the University of Minnesota Alimni Magazine, and the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. He has edited and designed scores of books for local presses, and has also written five of his own, including the essay collection By the Way and the popular travel book The Seven States of Minnesota, now in its third printing.

Of his new book, All the Things You Are, Pamela Espeland wrote in ArtScape:

There’s not a pinch of pretension anywhere in this collection, which explores the links between music and life, sometimes obviously and sometimes obliquely. Toren is a Twin Cities-based writer, so his book is also full of local references: to Northern Spark, Warren MacKenzie’s pottery, Art-A-Whirl, singing with the Oratorio Society, Lake Harriet, running into poet Robert Bly...

His writing received an Utne Independent Press Award for general excellence in 2007. He and his wife, Hilary, live in Golden Valley, Minnesota.