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New Dominion Bookshop to host book talk on the cultural significance of deer

Crystal Graham
erika howsare author nd
Erika Howsare/submitted/Photo by Meredith Coe

New Dominion Bookshop will host a book talk and signing with author Erika Howsare on Friday, Jan. 12, at 7 p.m..

Howsare will be speaking about her new nonfiction book, The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors.

This in-person event is  co-sponsored by The Living Earth School and is free and open to the public.

The Age of Deer is a hybrid of nature writing and cultural studies that investigates our connection with deer – from mythology to biology, from forests to cities, from coexistence to control and extermination – and invites readers to contemplate the paradoxes of how humans interact with and shape the natural world.

Deer have been an important part of the world that humans occupy for millennia. They’re one of the only large animals that can thrive in our presence. Our relationship today is full of contradictions: we hunt and protect them, we cull them from suburbs while making them an icon of wilderness, we see them both as victims and as pests.

But there is no doubt that we have a connection to deer: in mythology and story, in ecosystems biological and digital, in cities and in forests.

Howsare holds an MFA in literary arts from Brown University and has published two books of poetry. She also worked in local journalism for two decades, covering culture and environmental issues. She teaches writing and contributes reviews and essays to various national outlets. A native of Pennsylvania, she lives in rural Virginia.

New Dominion Bookshop is located at 404 E. Main St. on the Downtown Mall in Charlottesville.

Crystal Graham

Crystal Graham

Crystal Abbe Graham is the regional editor of Augusta Free Press. A 1999 graduate of Virginia Tech, she has worked for 25 years as a reporter and editor for several Virginia publications, written a book, and garnered more than a dozen Virginia Press Association awards for writing and graphic design. She was the co-host of "Viewpoints," a weekly TV news show, and co-host of Virginia Tonight, a nightly TV news show on PBS. Her work on "Virginia Tonight" earned her a national Telly award for excellence in television.