NW Authors Series Presents Erica Berry

The NW Authors Series will welcome Erica Berry at 2 p.m. on Saturday, January 25th. Berry received the 2024 Oregon Book Award for Creative Nonfiction for her debut work “Wolfish: Wolf, Self, and the Stories We Tell About Fear.”

Through a unique blend of memoir, scientific writing, ecological history, cultural history and personal narrative, Berry examines the intersection between feelings and the natural environment. She explores the ways in which humans project their fears onto wolves, while simultaneously exploring the world of wolves since their reintroduction in Oregon and California. She focuses on Wolf OR-7, a radio-collared gray wolf that migrated from the Wallowa Mountains in northeastern Oregon to the southern Cascade Range. And finally, she weaves her analysis together with her own coming-of-age story, as she wrestles with inherited beliefs about fear, danger, femininity, and the body.

Erica Berry is a writer and teacher whose essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Yale Review, The Guardian, Wired and other publications. She now lives in her hometown of Portland, Oregon, where she is a Writer-in-the-Schools and an Associate Fellow at the Attic Institute of Arts and Letters. This will be a hybrid presentation; come participate in the author’s discussion at the library or watch the Facebook Livestream from home.