AFTERWORD

When Marie told us she had cancer, it was with her typical humor and brevity: “Gearing up for Hot Chemo Summer,” and that was that. We were members of ABC, a writing group that Marie had convened for the last two decades or so. ABC stands for “Apply Butt to Chair,” and that's what we all committed to do and to write at least two sentences a day, for set sessions that lasted throughout the year. And at the end of each day, we’d post what we had accomplished. Sometimes it was just two sentences, sometimes it was a longer, more thoughtful post about a thorny problem or a debate about where to submit a piece, or a grumble about the notorious Second Reader. Usually Marie would post first, and it was through her posts over the last few years that we had a front seat to what became The Hungry City. From her teasing out mysteries in the archival documents, to the very first draft of the very first chapter, to her delight at sending off the completed manuscript to Cornell University Press, we were there for each stage. And so, when she shared over text that she wasn’t sure she’d be able to finish the copyediting stage, we knew we’d do anything needed to help bring the book to completion.

ABC depends on believing that small steps matter, and while our work couldn’t bring Marie back to life, the privilege of immersing ourselves in her words as we mourned her was a gift. Two of our number were Cornell authors, two were familiar with the archival material Marie analyzed, and two were expert grammarians, so we made a good team. It was easy to decide that we wanted only the lightest touch possible—that the readers of the book should have the joy of Marie's intellect and wordsmithing without any heavy intervention. Each of Marie's chapters had an initial reader and all of us rotated through the manuscript, essentially reading and commenting on it twice through. Any questions (inconsistencies in spelling, capitalization protocols for different languages, punctuation) went into a shared Google doc that we consulted and used to resolve our queries. More than once, one of us would hit a puzzle and our first instinct would be to reach out to Marie, our in-house expert in all things Catalan, only to realize, again, that we were doing this work because she could not. The gut punch of grief refreshed tapered as we applied ourselves to the edits, bathed in Marie's love of the colon and her sly wit. While we hated that we had to, taking up this task kept Marie with us in the days after her death, and we are grateful to have had that chance.

Sarah Davis-Secord

Valerie Garver

Meg Leja

Susan McDonough

Miriam Shadis