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Books & Brews, April 11, 2023 - Solastalgia

WMRA’s April 2023 Books & Brews featured Paul Bogard, Erica Cavanagh, and Lauren Alleyne, discussing Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World.

Signed copies of, "Solastalgia" are online at Stone Soup Books.

WMRA's Books & Brews is made possible thanks to our series sponsor, Gaines Group Architects. The Gaines Group has offices in Charlottesville and Harrisonburg.

About Solastalgia: One of the penalties of an ecological education," wrote Aldo Leopold, "is that one lives alone in a world of wounds." As climate change and other environmental degradations become more evident, experts predict that an increasing number of people will suffer emotional and psychological distress as a result. Many are feeling these effects already. Solastalgia explores this feeling with companionship, inspiration, and advice.

The concept of solastalgia comes from the Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht, who describes it as "the homesickness we feel while still at home." It’s the pain and longing we feel as we realize the world immediately around us is changing, with our love for that world serving as a catalyst for action on its behalf.

About Paul Bogard: Paul Bogard is the author of The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light, a finalist for the PEN/E. O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. His most recent works include the edited anthology Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World, the coffee table book To Know a Starry Night, and the children’s book What if Night? Paul is an associate professor of English at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota USA, where he teaches environmental literature and writing.

About Erica Cavanagh: Erica Cavanagh is Associate Professor in the Department of English and Interdisciplinary Liberal Studies. She teaches courses in African American Literature, Food Studies, and Creative Nonfiction Writing. Her memoir-in-progress, set in Benin, West Africa, where she served for two years as a Peace Corps volunteer, explores the cultural pressures placed on females to cultivate silence and bear up under systems that oppress them, reflections of which she began to recognize as also operating in American culture, particularly when it comes to double standards, sexual shaming, and pressures to marry.

About Lauren Alleyne: Lauren K. Alleyne is the Assistant Director of the Furious Flower Poetry Center and an Associate Professor of English at James Madison University. Her poetry, fiction, and non-fiction focus on the complexities of embodiment with regard to race and gender and often address issues of social justice. Alleyne has been widely published in journals and anthologies. Her debut collection of poetry explores coming of age as a young woman in a contemporary context. Her manuscript-in-progress uses Alleyne’s experiences as an immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago, where she was born and raised, to interrogate ideas of “homeland,” “nation,” “citizen,” as well as our narratives of leaving and making home.