2020/21 Portland Arts & Lectures: Helen Macdonald (Virtual Event)

For the opening night of the 2020-21 season of Portland Arts & Lectures, an evening with Helen Macdonald, we will be presenting a virtual event on October 13, 2020.

Given that Macdonald lives in England, and the uncertain timing of when we can gather again in the Schnitzer Concert Hall, there was not a reasonable way to reschedule. Again, this event will be highly produced and re-imagined to give our subscribers a special and exclusive evening.

Details about how to access these digital presentations will be sent via email to subscribers.

Portland Arts & Lectures 2020/21 Season
Presented by Literary Arts

Join Literary Arts for another five-part season of engaging talks from some of the world’s best writers and thinkers.

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator, naturalist, and historian of science. Her best-selling memoir H is for Hawk won the Samuel Johnson Prize and was shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her forthcoming essay collection, Vesper Flights, explores the human relationship to the natural world.

Series subscription available at Literary Arts: https://literary-arts.org/box-office/

[From the Portland’5 Website]

Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, illustrator and naturalist, and an affiliated research scholar at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Cambridge. Her most recent book is the essay collection, Vesper Flights (Grove Atlantic, August 2020). Her best-selling memoir, H Is for Hawk, which the New York Times notes reminds us that “excellent nature writing can lay bare some of the intimacies of the wild world.” Macdonald is the author of a cultural history of falcons, titled Falcon, and three collections of poetry, including Shaler’s Fish. Macdonald was a Research Fellow at Jesus College, Cambridge, has worked as a professional falconer, and has assisted with the management of raptor research and conservation projects across Eurasia. She now writes for the New York Times Magazine.

“There’s been a renaissance in nature writing in the U.K. over the last few years, and I’m delighted to be part of it, though saddened that much of what we are all writing about is fast disappearing or already gone.” (NYT)

“One of the things I learned is that we often use nature as a mirror of ourselves, and we use nature to justify things that humans do.” (Electric Lit)

“What grief does is shatter narratives: the stories you tell about your life, they all crumble at this point. Things become very confused, your agency is called into question, you’re not really sure who you are or what you’re facing…” (Guernica Magazine)

Praise, for H is for Hawk:

“Beautiful and nearly feral . . . H Is for Hawk reminds us that excellent nature writing can lay bare some of the intimacies of the wild world as well.” — New York Times

“Breathtaking . . . Helen Macdonald renders an indelible impression of a raptor’s fierce essence—and her own—with words that mimic feathers, so impossibly pretty we don’t notice their astonishing engineering.” — New York Times Book Review

[From the Literary Arts website]