Presented in partnership with the Wisconsin Book 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.