Join us on Wednesday, March 8th, at 7 PM for a reading and conversation between authors Erica Berry and Sierra Crane Murdoch for the release of Erica's debut book Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear. This event will be held at Montgomery Distillery.
An original and probing debut work of nonfiction by a brilliant new writer, rooted in her years-long quest to study the cultural legacy of the wolf In this enthralling, kaleidoscopic exploration of wolves both real and symbolic, Erica Berry weaves historic and scientific findings alongside criticism, journalism, and memoir to illuminate the strands of our cultural constructions of predator and prey, and what it means to navigate a world in which we can be both. From 17th-century Europeans referring to mysterious bodily sores as wolves, to contemporary xenophobia about wolves crossing national borders, wolves have long been made to carry our most entrenched sociopolitical, environmental, and bodily fears. Intimate and thought-provoking, Wolfish is a lyrical inquiry into the relationship between humans and wolves, anchored in the dual stories of one legendary tagged wolf, OR-7, and the author. Charting OR-7's long-distance solo journey after he leaves his pack in northeastern Oregon beside the author's own roaming trajectory away from her Oregon home, Wolfish wrestles with inherited narratives around fear, danger, and the body. From her grandfather's sheep farm to a wolf sanctuary on an aristocratic English estate, Erica Berry untangles binaries of predator and prey, self and other, and wild and domestic, finding new expressions for how to be a brave woman, human, and animal in our warming world. Perfect for readers of cultural criticism, environmental writing, Rebecca Solnit, H is for Hawk, or anybody trying to navigate a world that is often scary. A timely and necessary book for current and future generations.
About the author:
Erica Berry is a writer based in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. Her essays can be found in print and online with The Guardian, The New York Times Magazine, The Yale Review, Outside Magazine, Catapult, The Atlantic, Guernica, and others. Winner of the Steinberg Essay Prize and the Kurt Brown Prize in Nonfiction, she is the recipient of fellowships and funding from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Tin House, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Alliance for Young Artists and Writers, and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. Her work has been supported through residencies at the Ucross Foundation, Monson Arts, the Marble House Project, and the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. The 2019-2020 Writer-in-Residence and Teaching Fellow with the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan, she is currently a Writer-in-the-Schools with Literary Arts in Portland, and has taught writing classes with the Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, the New York Times Student Journeys, Craigardan Residency and Education Center, and the Anna Tasca Lanza Cooking School in Sicily. Wolfish is her first book.
Sierra Crane Murdoch's first book, Yellow Bird: Oil, Murder, and a Woman’s Search for Justice in Indian Country, was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the winner of an Oregon Book Award. Her journalism and essays have appeared in Harper’s, VQR, The New Yorker online, Orion, and High Country News, where she began her career, and on This American Life. She has held fellowships from the UC Berkeley and Middlebury College, and is a MacDowell Fellow.
