The Fourth State of Matter

Content Warning: This section references mass shootings, school shootings, gun violence, and suicide.

Jo Ann Beard is an essayist, novelist, and journalist. Beard has a BFA and MA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa (“Jo Ann Beard.” Sarah Lawrence College). She is the author of In Zanesville, The Boys of My Youth, Festival Days, and Cheri, in addition to journalism and essays anthologized and published in magazines. Her accolades include a Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, fellowships from the New York Foundation for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation, and a Whiting Writers’ Award. She began teaching at Sarah Lawrence College in 1999.

Beard served as the managing editor for a space-physics monthly publication at the University of Iowa. Her point that she “put a layperson’s spin” on the physicists’ work reflects the effects of “The Fourth State of Matter,” since she imbues the mass shooting with personal and emotional significance through details about her life. As the editor of this monthly and not a space physicist herself, Beard positions herself as an outsider in the essay. She views the beauty and otherworldliness of the stars while her colleagues examine their mathematical properties, establishing The Tension Between the Scientific/Rational and the Emotion/Spiritual.