New Dominion Bookshop in Charlottesville will host a book talk and signing with author Leigh Ann Henion on Saturday, Nov. 16, at 7 p.m.
Henion will be speaking about her new nonfiction book, Night Magic: Adventures Among Glowworms, Moon Gardens, and Other Marvels of the Dark, which was released from Algonquin Books in late September.
This in-person event is free and open to the public.
In Night Magic, Henion makes the case for embracing night as a profoundly beautiful part of the world we inhabit, and she invites the reader to leave our well-lit homes and step outside. It turns out we don’t have to go far to find marvels: we are surrounded by animals that rise with the moon, gigantic moths and nocturnal blooms that reveal themselves, incrementally, as light fades.
In her quest to know night with greater intimacy, Henion travels through forests alight with bioluminescent mushrooms and mountain valleys teeming with migratory salamanders. She ventures into the dark alongside naturalists, biologists, primitive-skills experts and others who’ve dedicated their lives to cultivating relationships with darkness and the creatures who depend on it.
Every page of this lyrical book feels like an opportunity to ask: how did I not know about this before? For example, we learn that it can take hours, not minutes, for human eyes to reach full night vision capacity. And that there are thousands of firefly species on earth, each with flash patterns as unique as fingerprints.
In this age of increasing artificial light, Night Magic is an invitation to focus on the biodiversity that surrounds us.
Henion is the New York Times–bestselling author of Phenomenal: A Hesitant Adventurer’s Search for Wonder in the Natural World. Henion’s writing has appeared in Smithsonian, The Washington Post, Garden & Gun, Men’s Journal, Backpacker and a variety of other publications.
New Dominion Bookshop is located at 404 E. Main St. on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville.
For more information, visit ndbookshop.com.
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Crystal Graham
