L. Annette Binder

L. Annette Binder’s short stories have appeared in the Pushcart and O. Henry Prize anthologies and been performed on Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. Her story collection, Rise (Sarabande), received the Mary McCarthy Prize, and her novel, The Vanishing Sky (Bloomsbury), was a New York Times Book Review selection for summer and an Indie Next Pick. Annette’s new book, Child of Earth and Starry Heaven (Wandering Aengus Press, 2025), is a memoir of motherhood, memory and memory loss. Kirkus calls it “an illuminating and moving mediation on dementia.”
Annette lives in New Hampshire with her family.

Child of Earth and Starry Heaven

When L. Annette Binder’s mother starts to forget things she’s always known, Annette researches ways to keep her from losing touch with the world. They try supplements and exercise routines, light therapy and sound tracks with 40-Hertz clicks. Annette begins to speak German with her mother—something she’d resisted since immigrating to the United States with her parents years before. And when these therapies prove ineffective, Annette simply spends time with her mother. Hour upon hour in memory care, where Annette begins to see hints of a world almost invisible to outsiders, where residents might lose cognition but they remain capable of feeling and expressing love.

Child of Earth and Starry Heaven is a story of motherhood, memory and memory loss. It looks to mythology, science, fiction, history and poetry to find meaning and beauty even as Helena’s cognition fades. Sad and joyous, it is a powerful meditation on the things that make us human and that connect us in even our darkest moments.