To arrange an event or speaking engagement, please reach out through Leslie Shipman at The Shipman Agency.
For other events, including workshops or book club visits, please contact Anna here.
Environmental Writing:
Narrating the Natural World
2-3:30pm ET, June 28, 2025
Next Chapter Books
16555 East Warren Avenue
Detroit, MI 48224
Our shared earth is rich with stories. In a generative workshop led by journalist and author Anna Clark, we’ll explore ways to chronicle it: personal testimony; poetic attention; asking the largest questions of climate change and environmental justice and much more. We’ll consider how writing about “the environment” and “the city” are not separate practices. We’ll spend a springtime Sunday in a cheerful bookstore, writing together, guided by prompts and exercises. We’ll playfully and thoughtfully explore our own relationship with nature.
This workshop is for all — anyone who takes inspiration from the living world. Come solo or bring a friend or family member for a creative afternoon. You’ll go home with newly written pages, a creative spark and a wealth of resources on environmental writing, including a robust reading list.
General admission is $65.
Sign up with a friend and get $10 off!
In Conversation with Matthew Gavin Frank
7-8pm ET, July 10, 2025
Book Suey
10345 Joseph Campau Ave
Hamtramck, MI 48212
Matthew Gavin Frank’s new nonfiction book, SUBMERSED: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines, which he’ll read from before the Q&A.
About SUBMERSED: An exquisite, lyrical foray into the world of deep-sea divers, the obsession and madness that oceans inspire in us, and the story of submarine inventor Peter Madsen’s murder of journalist Kim Wall—a captivating blend of literary prose, science writing, and true crime.
About Frank: His previous nonfiction book, Flight of the Diamond Smugglers (about, among other things, the ways in which carrier pigeons were used by diamond smuggling rings in coastal South Africa) was published in 2021 by W.W. Norton: Liveright. It was selected as one of NPR's Best Books of 2021 and as a finalist for the 2021 Heartland Booksellers Award in Nonfiction.
He is also the author of the nonfiction books, The Mad Feast: An Ecstatic Tour Through America’s Food (W.W. Norton: Liveright, 2015), Preparing the Ghost: An Essay Concerning the Giant Squid and Its First Photographer (W.W. Norton: Liveright, 2014), Pot Farm (The University of Nebraska Press, 2012), and Barolo (The University of Nebraska Press, 2010); the poetry books, The Morrow Plots (Black Lawrence Press, 2013), Warranty in Zulu (Barrow Street Press, 2010), and Sagittarius Agitprop (Black Lawrence Press, 2009).