Earthly Love: A Conversation with Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil
The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment, the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology, and Orion Magazine present Orion contributors and award-winning authors Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil in conversation with Mary Evelyn Tucker, co-author of Journey of the Universe and co-director of Yale’s Forum on Religion and Ecology. The event centers on themes of love, community, commitment, responsibility, and communication, exploring the intimacy and promise of humans’ moral, spiritual, and cultural relationships with the natural world – the love of nature and the nature of love. At a time when people are seeking inspiration and solace, this conversation will examine the ways environmental storytelling, spiritual ecology, and lessons of the more-than-human world can offer hope.
Earthly Love is the sixth event in an ongoing series between Orion and Yale to celebrate Orion’s anthologies. This event features two contributors to the latest anthology, Earthly Love: Stories of Intimacy and Devotion from Orion Magazine, Volume 2, an updated edition to the 2020 anthology of the same name, featuring poetry and prose that illuminate the nature of love in the Anthropocene. Prior events in the series have featured Ellen Bass, Lacy M. Johnson, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Robert Macfarlane, David G. Haskell, Peter Wohlleben, Jessica J. Lee, Sumana Roy, Alison Hawthorne Deming, and Kathleen Dean Moore.
Speakers
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: Against Which; Bringing the Shovel Down; Be Holding; and Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. His collection of essays, The Book of Delights, was released by Algonquin Books in 2019. He is a founding editor, with Karissa Chen and Patrick Rosal, of the online sports magazine Some Call it Ballin’, in addition to being an editor with the chapbook presses Q Avenue and Ledge Mule Press. Ross is a founding board member of the Bloomington Community Orchard, a non-profit, free-fruit-for-all food justice and joy project. He also works on The Tenderness Project with Shayla Lawson and Essence London. He has received fellowships from Cave Canem, the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Ross teaches at Indiana University.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the New York Times best-selling collection of nature essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, and Other Astonishments. She also wrote four previous poetry collections including Oceanic. She is poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club, and is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship in poetry. Her most recent book is a collection of food essays called Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, and her new book of nature poems, NIGHT OWL, will be out in March with Ecco.
Moderator
Mary Evelyn Tucker co-directs the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology with John Grim. Together they organized ten courses and edited ten volumes on World Religions and Ecology at Harvard. They wrote Ecology and Religion and created six online classes on Coursera titled, “Religions and Ecology: Restoring the Earth Community.” They are also executive producers of the Emmy Award winning film Journey of the Universe and creators of three Coursera courses on the film, the book, and Thomas Berry. Their newest project is the Living Earth Community.
This event is hosted by Orion Magazine, The Forest School at the Yale School of the Environment, Yale Forest Forum, and Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology. For more information or any questions, please contact yff@yale.edu.
Recommended Readings
Gay, R. (2024, September 13). Gooseberry Mary and the Un-Green Beans. Orion Magazine. https://orionmagazine.org/article/gooseberry-mary-green-beans/
Nezhukumatathil, A., & Gay, R. (2014, January 21). Letters from Two Gardens. Orion Magazine. https://orionmagazine.org/article/letters-from-two-gardens/