Name: Anne-Marie Erickson for In the Evening, We'll Dance
Start: 2025-09-25T19:00:00-05:00
Location: 318 North Central Ave, Duluth, MN, United States, Minnesota 55807

Anne-Marie Erickson for In the Evening, We'll Dance

Please join us on Thursday, September 25th at 7 pm for a heartfelt conversation with local author Anne-Marie Erickson, who will share her new book In the Evening, We’ll Dance: A Memoir in Essays on Love & Dementia (Holy Cow! Press). Anne-Marie will discuss how her loving and committed marriage survived the effects of dementia. Come with your honest questions as we talk about a topic that can happen to any of us. Anne-Marie will be signing her books at the event.
The interwoven essays of Anne-Marie Erickson’s touching memoir commemorate her bond with her late husband who had dementia. Erickson met Dick in 1973, and they married in 1981. They were both writers; he was seventeen years older and had three children. Together they built a log cabin in Minnesota’s North Woods and spent a year teaching English in Madrid. Three decades into their relationship, Dick started to exhibit memory problems consistent with Alzheimer’s. His later years were a mixture of heartache and tenderness. “I wanted to remain heedful of his dignity while bearing unflinching witness,” Erickson writes. With words disappearing, music became more important in their shared life. Erickson brought volumes of lyrics to Dick’s assisted-living home and sang to him. The essays are titled with phrases Dick said or wrote, including “I Still See in the Eyes of My Wife. Beautiful!” and “There’s So Much to Say, but I’m Not Capable.” Saturated with language and its loss, the text is lyrical, painting dementia as a “thief” that “picked the pockets of my husband’s mind.”
Anne-Marie Erickson has worked as a laundry maid, candle factory worker, billing clerk, editorial assistant, and secretary. She's been a freelance writer and college composition instructor for many years, with degrees in American Studies (BA) and English (MA). Erickson has been published in the University of Minnesota Press anthology, North Writers II. She lives in Grand Rapids, Minnesota.