By Tatiana Craine

Macalester alum Alex Lemon ’00 has made a myriad of blessings from what most people would consider a curse. During his undergraduate days at Macalester, Lemon suffered a cerebral hemorrhage that ended his baseball dreams, but opened up a world of opportunity in the literary community. Lemon eventually channeled his feelings and experiences into his creative writing. Lemon, now a renowned and successful poet, has had work featured in “Esquire,” “Best American Poetry 2008,” “AGNI,” “BOMB,” “Pleiades” and numerous other publications. In 2005, Lemon won the Literature Fellowship in Poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts. The next year, he was awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant.

Perhaps best known for his work “Happy: A Memoir,” Lemon currently teaches at Texas Christian University. He also boasts a teaching stint at his alma mater, having taught creative writing in the Macalester English Department from 2005-2006. Lemon co-edits “Luna,” a twice-yearly circulated poetry journal based out of the University of Minnesota. Additionally, he makes frequent photography-oriented blog posts on a site he has maintained since 2005.

Lemon’s work has garnered praise throughout the literary community. Author Nick Flynn wrote about Lemon’s memoir, “The pyrotechnic prose of Alex Lemon’s memoir creates an electrifying portrait of a body in crisis, and the way the soul is inexorably, reluctantly, dragged along..If ever a book was written in blood, it is this one.”

Lemon’s upcoming appearance at Macalester is thanks to his status as one of this year’s ACTC Visting Writers. More information about Lemon is available at is website: www.alexlemon.com

Lemon will read at Weyerhauser Chapel on Oct. 25 at 7:00pm. Free admission.