Kate Baer wore sequins to Talking Volumes.

It was a fitting close to the 2025 season — and not-so-subtle reminder that today is all we are promised. Might as well wear the sequins.

Talking Volumes: Kate Baer

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Baer’s latest book of poetry, “How About Now,” captures the mundane beauty of what it means to be a modern woman in midlife. She writes of shifting roles and shifting bodies, of the joy she finds in her family — even if she’d rather stand outside and look at them through the window, and the unique bond in female friendships.

MPR News reporter Catharine Richert stepped into the host chair for this Talking Volumes, and talked with Baer about bad childhood poetry, Amish romance novels, the power of getting older and how Baer’s latest poetry collection is both personal and resoundingly universal.

Musicians Faith Boblett and Seth Duin closed out the evening with their own kind of poetry.

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