Washington Post Humorist Alexandra Petri Navigates Life and its Awkwardness In Stride

If you don’t know anything about Alexandra Petri’s column for the Washington Post, the fact that it’s called “Compost” should tip you off.  It’s a humor column, at least most of the time, appearing multiple times a week online and weekly in print.

Petri grew up partly in Fond du Lac and partly in Washington, D.C., while her dad, Tom Petri, represented his Wisconsin district in Congress.

Petri writes a bit about that in her memoir, but her book, called A Field Guide to Awkward Silences, is more about coming to terms with her distinctly unusual approach to the world. Things like her childhood crush on Robert E. Lee and her trips to Star Wars conventions as Jabba the Hutt