Robert Michael Pyle and Jennifer Sahn

Start: 09/27/2012 7:00 pm

Thursday, Sept. 27 at 7 p.m., at Old World Deli

Co-Sponsored by OSU Press, The Spring Creek Project, and Grass Roots Books & Music.

Robert Michael Pyle will read from his new collection of essays, The Tangled Bank: Writings from Orion. He will be joined by Jennifer Sahn, editor at Orion, for an evening of conversation, reading, and book signing. The book is published by OSU Press, who will be co-sponsoring the event with The Spring Creek Project and Grass Roots Books & Music. This will be his only public appearance in Corvallis this fall.

In The Tangled Bank, Robert Michael Pyle explores Charles Darwin's contention that the elements of such a bank, and by extension all the living world, are endlessly interesting and ever evolving. Pyle's "Tangled Bank" column appeared in fifty-two consecutive issues of Orion and Orion Afield magazines over eleven years. In each concise piece, Pyle refutes "the idea that the world is a boring place," sharing his meticulous observations of the endless and fascinating details of the living earth.

Robert Michael Pyle dwells with his wife, Thea, a botanist and weaver, in an old Swedish farmstead in southwest Washington. His sixteen books include the John Burroughs Medal-winning Wintergreen, The Thunder Tree, Sky Time in Gray’s River, and Mariposa Road. A Guggenheim Fellow and founder of The Xerces Society, he is often associated with butterflies, slugs, and Bigfoot.

Jennifer Sahn has been on the editorial staff at Orion for twenty years. Articles she has edited have won the John Burroughs Essay Award, the Pushcart Prize, and have been reprinted in the Best American Science and Nature Writing, Best American Nonrequired Reading, Best Spiritual Writing, and Best Creative Nonfiction. Her writing has been published in a variety of print venues and she has served as the editor for several book projects.

Book List