Artsmith Salon Series Kicks off 2014-2015 Season

Tuesday, October 14, 6 p.m., Darvill’s Bookstore

— from Jill McCabe Johnson —

Ana Maria Spagna

Melissa Hart

For decades Jack London’s Call of the Wild reflected and sometimes defined how western culture interacts with and claims dominion over the natural world. However, writers such as Rachel Carson and Bill McKibbons have challenged us to think more broadly about humanity’s role in relation to the environment.

This month Artsmith kicks off its 2014-2015 Salon Series with two writers who go a step further in exploring what it means to be human in the presence of what we call “wild.” Ana Maria Spagna’s nonfiction book, Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness, examines how different groups and cultures break bread and form bonds in shared meals ranging from makeshift weddings, campfires, and even a funeral. Melissa Hart’s memoir, Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls Saved a Family, tells the story of working with owls and other raptors, and how it helped change her from a divorced and guarded woman to a wife and mother who learned to love and nurture in ways she’d never imagined. Both books examine how nature helps humanity become a little more humane.

Ana Maria Spagna’s Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness was a finalist for the 2012 Washington State Book Award. She is the author of Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter’s Civil Rights Journey, winner of the 2009 River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize, and Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw, named a Seattle Times Best Book of 2004. Her writing on nature, work, and life in a small community appears regularly in High Country News, Mountain Gazette, Oregon Quarterly, and elsewhere. She lives in Stehekin, Washington.

Melissa Hart is the author of Wild Within: How Rescuing Owls Inspired a Family (Lyons, 2014) and Gringa: A Contradictory Girlhood (Seal, 2009). She’s a contributing editor at The Writer, and her articles and essays have appeared in High Country News, Orion, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Horizon Air Magazine, and numerous other publications.

The reading will take place at 6:00 pm Tuesday, October 14, at Darvill’s Bookstore, 1 Main Street, in Eastsound, and will include hors d’eouvres, question and answer, and a book-signing.

Artsmith is an Orcas Island based nonprofit that supports education related to the arts and environment. Darvill’s is an independently owned and operated bookstore.