New Dominion Bookshop
404 E Main St
Charlottesville, VA 22902
United States
Free and open to the public.
Thorpe Moeckel (Down by the Eno, Down by the Haw), Margaret Renkl (Late Migrations), Laura-Gray Street (editor, A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia), with moderator, Sharon Harrigan, share perspectives on their deep engagement with the natural world as a source of inspiration and solace, continuity and awe.
Book sales and signing will follow. Free to attend and open to the public.
“The naturalist’s month-by-month account of the year he lived on the watershed of two North Carolina rivers, the Eno and Haw, is a needed invitation to regard nature with new eyes and be transformed by it. Its personal, in-the-moment viewpoints make it feel possible to walk into the woods and leave the fray behind.” —Melissa Wuske, Foreward Reviews
“[Renkl] guides us through a South lush with bluebirds, pecan orchards, and glasses of whiskey shared at dusk in this collection of prose in poetry-size bits; as it celebrates bounty, it also mourns the profound losses we face every day.” ―O, the Oprah Magazine
“Stunning images by seven Southern Appalachian artists and conversationally written natural history information complement contemporary poems from writers such as Ellen Bryant Voigt, Wendell Berry, Janisse Ray, Sean Hill, Rebecca Gayle Howell, Deborah A. Miranda, Ron Rash, and Mary Oliver. Their insights illuminate the wonders of the mountain South, fostering intimate connections. The guide is an invitation to get to know Appalachia in the broadest, most poetic sense.” —University of Georgia Press
Margaret Renkl
Margaret Renkl is the author of Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South and Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss. She is a contributing opinion writer for the New York Times, where her essays appear weekly. Her work has also appeared in Guernica, Literary Hub, Proximity, and River Teeth, among others. The founding editor of Chapter 16, a daily literary publication of Humanities Tennessee, and a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina, she lives in Nashville.
From Margaret Renkl comes an unusual, captivating portrait of a family—and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.