Belle Boggs, "The Art of Waiting"

In her well-paced collection of essays, Boggs, author of the award-winning short-story collection Mattaponi Queen, charts the long and often agonizing process couples struggling with infertility endure as they try to have a child. She looks at the options available to would-be parents, from adoption—not as simple as most people think—to IVF and other highly technological medical procedures, all as invasive, painful, expensive, and iffy as they’re reputed to be. Even as she wonders why people sacrifice so much, Boggs admits to not fully understanding her own longing for a child, and her meditative exploration of parenthood includes considerations of a pregnant zoo gorilla, victims of forced sterilizations, and the childless lives of artists such as Virginia Woolf.

Boggs is in conversation with Dan Kois, culture editor at Slate.

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