Events

In Vulture: The Private Life of an Unloved Bird, author Katie Fallon illustrates a wide variety of possibilities, ranging from the scientific to the literary, for representing “nature” in writing. Inspired by Vulture’s diverse approach to nature writing, this roundtable invites three panelists to think together about how writers and researchers from different backgrounds interact with the natural spaces around us.

Panelists include:

• McKay Jenkins, Cornelius Tilghman Professor of English, Journalism and Environmental Humanities at the University of Delaware, whose articles and books on people and the natural world include (most recently) Food Fight: GMOs and the Future of the American Diet; ContamiNation: My Quest to Survive in a Toxic World; and Bloody Falls of the Coppermine: Madness and Murder in the Arctic Barren Lands;
• Talley Kayser, director of the Adventure Literature program in the Penn State English department, whose work includes both scholarly and creative writing about place, space, gender, and materiality;
• and Elizabeth Hajek, Associate Professor of Geosciences, whose research and writing about Earth's stratigraphic record crosses disciplinary and geographic boundaries.

Following the panelists’ opening statements there will be ample time for question and answer with the audience.  Light refreshments will be served.