Poised to Soar Helen Macdonald and Camille Dungy discuss Vesper Flights

Bestselling author Helen Macdonald is joined in conversation by Camille T. Dungy to celebrate the publication of Vesper Flights (Grove).

This event is presented in partnership with the Bay Area Book Festival.

All ticket sales are being handled by the Book Festival. Please visit their eventbrite page to register.

About Vesper Flights

Animals don’t exist in order to teach us things, but that is what they have always done, and most of what they teach us is what we think we know about ourselves.

In Vesper Flights Helen Macdonald brings together a collection of her best loved essays, along with new pieces on topics ranging from nostalgia for a vanishing countryside to the tribulations of farming ostriches to her own private vespers while trying to fall asleep.

Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences: observing the massive migration of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary, seeking the last golden orioles in Suffolk’s poplar forests. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife.

By one of this century’s most important and insightful nature writers, Vesper Flights is a captivating and foundational book about observation, fascination, time, memory, love and loss and how we make sense of the world around us.

About the authors

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, historian, and naturalist who lives in Cambridge, England. She is also the author of the poetry collection Shaler’s Fish, and the bestselling memoir, H is for Hawk.

Camille T. Dungy is an award-winning poet and editor and professor of creative writing at Colorado State University. She lives with her husband and child in Fort Collins, Colorado.