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Erin Sharkey A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars
About the author:
Erin Sharkey is a writer, arts and abolition organizer, cultural worker, and film producer based in Minneapolis. She is cofounder of Free Black Dirt and a co-op cofounder and steward of Rootsprings, a retreat center in central Minnesota. Sharkey has received fellowships and residencies from the Loft Mentor Series, VONA/Voices, Givens Foundation, Bell Museum of Natural History, Jerome Foundation, Black Visions, and Headwaters Foundation. She teaches with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop.
About the book:
A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars is a vibrant collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history and memory. In its pages, luminary writers reflect on the significance of nature in their lived experience and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks in the United States. Each of these essays engages with a single archival object, whether directly or obliquely, exploring stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space and finding rich Blackness everywhere.
Six Bridges Book Festival: Donovan X. Ramsey & Erin Sharkey
Weaving together riveting research with the voices of survivors, Donovan X. Ramsey’s When Crack Was King is a crucial reevaluation of the crack epidemic of the 1980s and ’90s and a powerful argument for providing historically violated communities with the resources they deserve.
Erin Sharkey’s A Darker Wilderness is a vibrant collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history and memory.