4 p.m. PT / 5 p.m. MT / 6 p.m. CT / 7 p.m. ET
This reading is an hour earlier than our normal online readings.
Monday, September 23, 2024 | Online
Join Terrain.org and Trinity University Press for an online, pre-election Dear America reading featuring award-winning writers and activists Alison Hawthorne Deming, Lauret Savoy, and Suzanne Roberts, hosted by editor-in-chief Simmons Buntin, 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 asked Alison and fellow Dear America contributors Lauret Savoy and Suzanne Roberts to read their letters and other work in support of democracy and place. Please join us for this important, timely reading, followed by an engaging discussion.
Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of six books of poetry and five books of nonfiction, with the poetry collection Blue Flax & Yellow Mustard Flower and the anthology The Gift of Animals: Poems of Love, Loss, & Connection coming out in spring 2025. Recipient of Guggenheim and NEA Fellowships, she is Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona. Read Alison’s original Letter to America.
Lauret Savoy’s research and writing consider how the nation’s ever-unfolding history has marked the land and people. Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape won the American Book Award; it was also a finalist for PEN American and additional honors. Her other books include The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World (with Alison Deming) and Bedrock: Writers on the Wonders of Geology, named one of the “Five Best” science books in the Wall Street Journal. Lauret writes of the complex intertwinings of natural and cultural histories to understand the American land’s origins—and the stories we tell of ourselves in this land. A woman of African American, Euro-American, and Indigenous heritages, Lauret is the David B. Truman Professor of Environmental Studies & Geology at Mount Holyoke College. Winner of Mount Holyoke’s Distinguished Teaching Award and an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, Lauret has held fellowships at the Smithsonian Institution and Yale University. She was also elected a Fellow of the Geological Society of America and is currently a Fellow of Harvard University’s Warren Center for Studies in American History. Read Lauret’s Letter to America.
Suzanne Roberts is the author of Animal Bodies: On Death, Desire, and Other Difficulties, Bad Tourist: Misadventures in Love and Travel, and Almost Somewhere: Twenty-Eight Days on the John Muir Trail (Winner of the 2012 National Outdoor Book Award and published in a new edition in 2023), as well as four collections of poems. Named “The Next Great Travel Writer” by National Geographic’s Traveler, Suzanne’s work has been listed as notable in Best American Essays and included in The Best Women’s Travel Writing. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, Ploughshares, National Geographic Traveler, Creative Nonfiction, Brevity, River Teeth, and elsewhere. She holds a doctorate in literature and the environment from the University of Nevada-Reno, teaches in the low residency MFA in creative writing at UNR-Tahoe, and lives with her husband in South Lake Tahoe, California. She’s currently at work on a creative writing craft book based on her newsletter: 52 Writing Prompts. Read Suzanne’s newest Letter to America.
Learn more about and purchase Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy.