The world we find ourselves inhabiting and the circumstances we’re facing threaten to silence even the most resilient writer. But what might come of looking deeply at the unbeautiful, the overlooked, worn, and even the ruined? What happens when you enter the act of looking so deeply you unexpectedly find yourself in a new place, with a surprising stance or changed belief?

What if the idea of tenderness as a response to the destructive habits of our era were taken up as a possibility in the face of fear and anxiety? What if we saw alternative forms of beauty in the wreckage? In this talk I’ll look at some techniques I’ve discovered that have helped me engage with the often ruinous and breathtaking results of climate change and propose some ways into the issue at large that might help sustain creative energy for the long haul.

Lia’s talk will be followed by a reception and buffet dinner.

Lia Purpura is the author of ten collections, including essays, poems, translations and artists’ books. A finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for On Looking (essays), her awards include Guggenheim, NEA, and Fulbright Fellowships, as well as five Pushcart Prizes, the AWP Award and others. Her work appears in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Orion, The Paris Review, The Georgia Review, Agni, Emergence, and elsewhere. Purpura has served as Writer in Residence at The University of Maryland, Baltimore County and Loyola University; other teaching venues include the Rainier Writing Workshop, the Breadloaf Writers’ Conference, the University of Iowa’s Nonfiction MFA program, as well as workshops at the Montgomery County Correctional Facility, and the Glenwood Life Recovery Center. Her newest collections are It Shouldn’t Have Been Beautiful (poems) and All the Fierce Tethers (essays).