Hearth: A Global Conversation on Community, Identity, and Place
Editors Susan O’Connor and Annick Smith read from and discuss their new anthology, Hearth: A Global Conversation on Community, Identity, and Place (Milkweed, 2019), which brings together writers from across the world to share the enduring importance and shifting associations of the hearth in our world.
This event is free and open to the public.
About the Book
A hearth is many things: a place for solitude; a source of identity; something we make and share with others; a history of ourselves and our homes. It is the fixed center we return to. It is just as intrinsically portable. It is, in short, the perfect metaphor for what we seek in these complex and contradictory times—set in flux by climate change, mass immigration, the refugee crisis, and the dislocating effects of technology.
Featuring original contributions from some of our most cherished voices—including Terry Tempest Williams, Bill McKibben, Pico Iyer, Natasha Trethewey, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Chigozie Obioma—Hearth suggests that empathy and storytelling hold the power to unite us when we have wandered alone for too long.
About the Editors
Susan O’Connor is an environmental and arts advocate. She is coeditor with Annick Smith of Hearth: A Global Conversation on Identity, Community, and Place and The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie. She lives in Missoula, Montana.
Annick Smith is the author of several books, including Homestead, In This We Are Native, Big Bluestem, and most recently Crossing the Plains with Bruno. She is also the editor of Headwaters: Montana Writers on Water & Wilderness, and coeditor with Susan O’Connor of The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie and, most recently, Hearth: A Global Conversation on Identity, Community, and Place. She lives in Bonner, Montana.
