Writing the More-Than-Human World: A Reading and Conversation with Heather Swan and Catherine Jagoe
Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Science Festival.
At a time when some scientists claim we are experiencing an insect apocalypse, Catherine Jagoe and Heather Swan use two different genres to call attention to these marvelous and crucial beings. Swan’s Where the Grass Still Sings is a nonfiction and art book about the vital role of insects and those working to save them around the globe; Jagoe’s Prayer to the God of Small Things is a book of ecopoetry that features a range of tiny Wisconsin insects but also larger beings including birds, trees, and muskrats.
Writing about the nexus between the human and more-than-human world in this time of climate change and species loss, the two will read from their new books and discuss issues such as the dismal history of human treatment of insects; the “problem” of anthropomorphizing animals; writing in response to or in conjunction with art and photography; acknowledging complicity and its complications; paying attention as a practice of interconnection; and how to cultivate wonder and hope at a time of unparalleled ecological destruction.
Catherine Jagoe
Catherine Jagoe is a poet, translator, and nonfiction writer. Her previous poetry book, Bloodroot, won the 2016 Settlement House American Poetry Prize and the Council for Wisconsin Writers’ Poetry Book Award. Her poems have been featured on The Writer’s Almanac and Poetry Daily. Her nonfiction has received a Pushcart Prize and a citation in Best American Essays. She is a contributor to Wisconsin Public Radio’s Wisconsin Life series and works as a Spanish translator in Madison.
Heather Swan
Heather Swan is a poet and a creative nonfiction writer. Her critically acclaimed book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field, also published by Penn State University Press, won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award and first prize in the scholarly book category at the annual New York Book Show. She teaches writing and environmental literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.