Sonoma County author Manjula Martin and writer and reporter Lauren Markham will engage in a thoughtful and inspiring literary conversation at Artefact Design & Salvage, 20490 Broadway in downtown Sonoma between, 6-8 pm, Friday May 16.
The event celebrates the paperback release of The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History, a critically acclaimed memoir of the 2020 Walbridge Fire and its far-reaching implications for our landscape and the future. This vivid yet contemplative book describes the now-familiar experience of wildfire and its emotional impacts and the way we are all learning to accept its presence as part of our “new normal” in California.
The book is a love letter to the landscapes of the American West as it follows the author from the oak woodlands of Sonoma County to the redwood groves of coastal Santa Cruz to the pines and peaks of the Sierra Nevada as she seeks shelter and tries to better understand fire’s elemental roles in ecology and culture. Ultimately, she unearths new possibility for inhabiting beauty, pain, grief, and joy within the cycles of harm and renewal in the natural world.
Manjula and Lauren will talk about the recognized phenomenon of climate grief, as we absorb the changes in the landscape that we are experiencing and anticipating. In her most recent book, “Immemorial,” Lauren writes: “I am in need of a word… to memorialize something that is in the process of being lost – a landscape, a species, birdsong. Can memorials look toward the future as they do to the past? How can we create “a psychic space for feeling” while spurring action and agitating for change?”
The discussion will also touch on the need to combine personal narrative with reporting as we all shape new stories about the current era.
Manjula and Lauren will each do short readings followed by a conversation and audience Q&A. A wine reception and book signing will follow the presentation. Refreshments are included in the ticket price.
Copies of The Last Fire Season and Immemorial will be available for purchase at the event.
Tickets at Eventbrite:
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