Gayla Marty’s new book won’t be published til April — but you can get a sneak peak at the Book Club Blast.

MinnPost: Tell us about your upcoming book release.

Gayla Marty: When I was a girl, I inhabited a world that was paradise in the ancient sense. A farm made in a clearing from forests and wetlands.

It wasn’t perfect, but a place where the forces of life contended with suffering, and beauty prevailed.

I wrote “Memory of Trees” (University of Minnesota Press) to preserve it in my heart and to keep it alive as a testimony of a way it’s possible to live in the world, wherever we are.

MP: Which writers or works have been the strongest influences on your own writing?  

GM: Elias Khoury (“The Little Mountain”), James Joyce and the Bible.

MP: What do you love most about living in Minnesota?

GM: Living in Minneapolis, I love that I cross one of the great rivers of the world almost every day.

The Mississippi is in a category with the Nile and the Amazon, the Yangtze and the Danube, and it flows through my city, a mile from my house.

On a lunch hour, I can walk across it and be back in my office in 25 minutes. I love that.