The World and the Word:
Environmental Science and Literary Art
April 25& 26, 2008

The 8 th annual Juniper Festival explores the confluence of environmental science and literary art. Poets, essayists, fiction writers, activists, publishers, and scientists will gather to investigate the many ways environmental science and literary art need and nourish one another. Narrative and data, field work and poetic form: how do these transmute and translate one another? What does literary art have to say about the health of the planet? The honey bees? About the great migrations, the resplendent woods? The sustainability of our habits? What effect might literature, and literary artists, have on the world our children inherit? The Juniper Festival will feature two days of readings, roundtables, film screenings, and more.

Friday April 25th

12:00—Film screening (film to be announced); Amherst Cinema Arts Center

2:30—Keynote Address: David Gessner, editor of Ecotone , author of Soaring with Fidel; Sick of Nature; and Return of the            Osprey ; Amherst Cinema Arts Center

4:15—Roundtable: Local Solutions, Intentional Living ; Emily Dickinson Homestead

8:00—Mini Readings by Many : from Pliny to Barry Lopez, Poetry & Prose ; Unitarian Church of Amherst

Saturday April 26th

12:00—Address: Seachange: Science, Poetry, & Whale Song : Roger Payne, whale biologist, and Lisa Harrow, actress              (venue to be announced)

2:00—Roundtable: Activism and Art, Science and the Soul ; Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts

3:30—Roundtable: Eco-literacy & Environmental Publishing ; Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts

5:00—Reading: Derrick Jensen, writer, activist, small farmer, bee keeper; author of A Language Older than Words, and            Listening to the Land: Conversations about Nature, Culture, and Eros ; Memorial Hall, University of            Massachusetts

8:00—Reading: Gretel Ehrlich, author of The Solace of Open Spaces; Questions of Heaven; John Muir, a biography; and            The Future of Ice ; Memorial Hall, University of Massachusetts

www.umass.edu/english/eng/mfa/juniperfestival

juniper@hfa.umass.edu

A program of the University of Massachusetts Amherst MFA Program for Poets and Writers' Juniper Initiative. Co-sponsored by Amherst Books, Amherst Cinema Arts Center , The Green Sanctuary Committee, Emily Dickinson Homestead & The Valley Advocate. Made possible with the generous support of the University of Massachusetts English Department, College of Humanities & Fine Arts, Vice Provost of Research, Arts Council, Coop Power, & Franklin Land Trust.

This program is funded in part by the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities,
which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate
of the National Endowment for the Humanities.