Authors / Interviews

The Salt Stones: Author Q&A with Helen Whybrow

Milkweed Staff — 02/05/2025

We recently sat down with author (and Milkweed editor-at-large) Helen Whybrow to talk about her forthcoming book, The Salt Stones: Seasons of a Shepherd’s Life. Touching on everything from cycles of life in nature to the art of belonging to parenting on a farm, read on for a taste of what’s to come in this profoundly moving book.

Photograph by Helen Whybrow

Milkweed Staff: A favorite section from the book is your description of belonging actually being a practice of participation. Can you say a bit more about how that looks as a Shepherd, mother, and activist?

Helen Whybrow: Belonging is something so…

Sangamithra Iyer

Sangamithra Iyer is an environmental planner, engineer, and writer. She is the recipient of a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, a Café Royal Foundation Literature Grant and the Diamonstein-Spielvogel Fellowship at the New York Public Library.

Lewis Hyde

Lewis Hyde is a poet, essayist, translator, and cultural critic. A MacArthur Fellow and renown author, his previous books include The Gift, Trickster Makes This World, and A Primer for Forgetting.

Henry David Thoreau

Henry David Thoreau is one of the most widely recognized names in American letters. Born in 1817, he wrote extensively on naturalism, transcendentalism, philosophy, global and American politics, and abolition.

Jason Allen-Paisant

Jason Allen-Paisant is the author of two critically acclaimed books of poetry, Thinking with Trees and Self-Portrait as Othello, which won the United Kingdom’s two most prestigious poetry awards for 2023—the Forward Prize and T. S. Eliot Prize.

Keith S. Wilson

Keith S. Wilson is a game designer, an Affrilachian Poet, and a Cave Canem fellow.

New York, NY —

In Person: Claire Wahmanholm at the National Book Foundation's 2025 Science + Literature Ceremony

Join the National Book Foundation, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, and The Cooper Union for the 2025 Science + Literature Ceremony, celebrating the three remarkable 2025 Science + Literature selected titles in fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Selected authors Claire Wahmanholm for Meltwater, Ed Yong for An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, and Ramona Ausubel forThe Last Animal will join for readings and conversation. Learn more about the event here.

Los Angeles, CA —

Virtual: Ellen Wayland-Smith in Conversation with Eula Biss, Lochlann Jain, and Maggie Nelson

Join Ellen Wayland-Smith to discuss new book The Science of Last Things: Essays on Deep Time and the Boundaries of the Self. The author will be joined by Eula Biss, Lochlann Jain, and moderated by Maggie Nelson.

This discussion is part of the Levan Institute for the Humanities’ “Book Chats” series, organized in partnership with the USC Writing Program, the Department of English, and the HEAL program at the Keck School of Medicine. Learn more and register here.

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