“Age of Deer” Author, Erika Howsare, Visits Foggy Notion
By WTJU Rock
Date: 01/10/2024
Time: 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm
Local Charlottesville poet, journalist, and author, Erika Howsare, will join Zostress in the second hour of “Foggy Notion” for a chat about the writing life and her recently released non-fiction book, The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with our Wild Neighbors. They will also discuss the Podcast, If You See a Deer, recorded at WTJU by Erika and former WTJU Rock Host, Tyler J. Carter, and housed on the Virginia Audio Collective platform. The two hour program will feature a curious playlist of songs centered around nature, the animal kingdom, and deer.
Listen Wednesday afternoon on 91.1 FM or streaming at wtju.net/player. The program will also be archived for two weeks after broadcast in WTJU’s Recent Shows.
There will be a book talk with Erika Howsare on Friday, January 12, 7 p.m., at New Dominion Bookshop. An audience Q&A will follow. This event is free and open to the public.
About the Book: The Age of Deer is a masterful 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. In the twenty-first century, our relationship 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.
About the Author: Erika Howsare holds an MFA in literary arts from Brown University and has published two books of poetry. She also worked in local journalism for twenty years, 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.
