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UNO Professor Lisa Knopp on New Book About 23-Year Friendship with Death Row Inmate

Author photo of Lisa Knopp, a white woman with long blond hair wearing blue glasses.
Lisa Knopp
Lisa Knopp is an author, activist, and professor of English at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her latest book is "From Your Friend Carey Dean," which chronicles her 23-year friendship with a death row inmate and resulting political awakening.

Lisa Knopp teaches creative nonfiction at the University of Nebraska Omaha and has written several books, including "Bread," "What the River Carries," and "Field of Vision." Her latest book is "From Your Friend, Cary Dean: Letters from Nebraska’s Death Row," which chronicles her friendship with Cary Dean Moore, who spent 38 years on death row before his execution in 2018.

On today's show, Knopp discusses how her earlier writing, which was largely focused on place, has come to encompass the broader political questions of why and how a place becomes what it is, as well as how she came to be a death penalty abolitionist.

Courtney is back in her hometown after graduating from the University of Kansas in 2019 with degrees in journalism and film. While at KU, she was the arts and culture editor of the University Daily Kansan and had a summer internship at KCUR, Kansas City's NPR member station. She has three pet rats and has seen almost every Audrey Hepburn movie.
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