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Patrick Wensink

Patrick Wensink is the author of “The Great Black Swamp: Toxic Algae, Toxic Relationships, and The Most Interesting Place in America Nobody’s Ever Heard Of,” the bestseller “Broken Piano for President” and several other novels and books for children. He teaches at Lincoln Memorial University in Tennessee, where he directs the Mountain Heritage Literary Festival.
Horacio Romero of Toledo, Ohio, looks at algae in Lake Erie at Maumee Bay State Park on Aug. 4, 2014. (Aaron P. Bernstein/Getty Images)

Toxic algae season is back — and Trump has cut safeguards

Patrick Wensink
(Reuters/Jonathan Ernst)

Am I raising a Donald Trump? My kid wants to Make Playtime Great Again

Patrick Wensink
Donald Trump; Hillary Clinton (Reuters/Mike Segar/Getty/Justin Sullivan/Photo montage by Salon)

Town Hall doomsday scenarios: 8 epic meltdowns that could totally happen at tonight’s debate

Patrick Wensink
Nirvana

Photos from the Kurt Cobain crime scene that could be high art

Patrick Wensink
(<a href='http://www.istockphoto.com/user_view.php?id=171478'>chang</a> via <a href='http://www.istockphoto.com/'>iStock</a>)

The 7 best songs about pizza ever recorded

Patrick Wensink
My Morning Jacket (AP/Vince Bucci)

7 Christmas songs that are unintentionally depressing

Patrick Wensink
Johnny Cash (AP)

The 5 kinds of music you can listen to with your kids

Patrick Wensink
Pots of cannabis

My neighbor, the wannabe drug lord

Patrick Wensink
T-Model Ford playing at Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar in Charlottesville, VA on March 1, 2010 (Wikimedia Commons)

When bluesman T-Model Ford died, so did the dirty blues

Patrick Wensink
Wilson Pickett plays at the Acura stage at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on Friday, May 4, 2001, in New Orleans. (AP/Douglas Mason)

My pilgrimage to Wilson Pickett’s grave

Patrick Wensink
(AP/Rick Bowmer)

Gun nuts’ strangest subculture: Book clubs

Patrick Wensink
(By Danny Norton from Portland, OR, United States (Breeders Kim Deal), Wikimedia Commons)

The weirdest album to ever go platinum

Patrick Wensink
(iStockphoto/alexsl/Salon)

My Amazon bestseller made me nothing

Patrick Wensink