5 p.m. PT / 6 p.m. MT / 7 p.m. CT / 8 p.m. ET
Thursday, October 24, 2024 | Online
Join Terrain.org and Trinity University Press for an online, pre-election Dear America reading filled with joy and humor, featuring award-winning writers and humorists Michael Branch, John T. Price, and Laura Jackson, hosted by Terrain.org nonfiction editor Elizabeth Dodd, followed by Q&A.
Alison Hawthorne Deming launched the Letter to America series in Terrain.org. From that ongoing series we published, in partnership with Trinity University Press, Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, co-edited by Simmons Buntin, Elizabeth Dodd, and Derek Sheffield. As we near one of the most important presidential elections in the history of our country, we have fellow Dear America contributors Michael Branch, John T. Price, and Laura Jackson to read their letters and other work of joy and humor in support of democracy and place. Please join us for this important, timely reading, followed by an engaging discussion.
Michael Branch is the author of more than 300 essays, which have appeared in venues including CNN, the San Francisco Chronicle, Slate, Outside, Orion, Ecotone, Terrain.org, Pacific Standard, Bustle, Utne Reader, National Parks, The Scientist, and High Country News. Mike has published ten books, including his trilogy of environmental humor writing from the Great Basin Desert: Raising Wild, Rants from the Hill, and How to Cuss in Western. His creative nonfiction includes pieces recognized as Notable essays in The Best American Essays, The Best Creative Nonfiction, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing. He has received the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award and the Montana Prize for Humor, and this fall will be inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame. In its review of Mike’s latest book, On the Trail of the Jackalope, the Wall Street Journal wrote that “Branch knows at least as much about jackalopes as Einstein did about physics.” Read Michael Branch’s Letter to America, as well as the essays “Lawn Guilt” and “Pilgrimage to the Pointy-Toed Boots,” plus John T. Price’s interview with Michael Branch, “Necessary Monsters.”
John T. Price is the award-winning author of four books of creative nonfiction, including Man Killed by Pheasant and Other Kinships, Daddy Long Legs: The Natural Education of a Father, and All is Leaf: Essays and Transformations. He is also editor of The Tallgrass Prairie Reader. A recipient of a prose fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, his work has recently appeared in Terrain.org, Orion, Fourth Genre, Essay Daily, and Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. He is the Regents/Foundation Distinguished Professor at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, where he directs the English Department’s Creative Nonfiction Writing Program. He lives with his family in the Loess Hills of western Iowa. Read John T. Price’s Letter to America, as well as the essays “Pizza Night on Planet Fitness,” “Peacock, Beware!” and “Confessions of a Prairie Lounge Singer.”
Laura Jackson is an environmental writer, humorist, and West Virginian. Her work has appeared in places like Terrain.org, Brevity, Hippocampus, and Still, and has been listed as Notable in The Best American Essays. Her essay collection, Deep & Wild: On Mountains, Opossums, & Finding Your Way in West Virginia was released in October 2024. Read Laura Jackson’s Letter to America, “Dear West Virginia,” as well as her essay, “Oh, possum.”
Learn more about and purchase Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy.
