Schlitz Audubon Nature Center and Boswell Book Company are pleased to welcome back (virtually) Helen Macdonald, author of H is for Hawk. In this Zoom event, Macdonald will be discussing her new essay collection, Vesper Flights, in conversation with our Raptor Program Director, Lindsay Obermeier. The event will be introduced with a short, exclusive video of Helen Macdonald out and about in the fields around her home in England, talking about her inspirations for the book.

About the event
Tickets, which are $40, include the event and a hardcover copy of Vesper Flights and benefit our Raptor Program. The first 50 people who register will receive a custom bookplate signed by the author. Attendees can choose to pick up the book at Boswell Book Company (2559 N. Downer Ave., Milwaukee) or have it shipped media mail to a US address for an additional $4. If you choose pick-up, you will get a confirmation when your book is ready. Attendees will receive a link to the Zoom event via email on September 17.

About the book
Macdonald brings together her best-loved essays that explore the human relationship with the natural world along with new pieces in a collection both moving and frank, personal and political. Meditating on notions of captivity and freedom, immigration and flight, Helen invites us into her most intimate experiences, including observing massive migrations of songbirds from the top of the Empire State Building, and watching tens of thousands of cranes in Hungary. She writes with heart-tugging clarity about wild boar, swifts, mushroom hunting, migraines, twentieth-century spies, the strangeness of birds’ nests, and the unexpected guidance and comfort we find when watching wildlife. Read the title essay.

About the author
Helen Macdonald is a writer, poet, naturalist, and historian of science. Her book H is for Hawk won many prizes, including the Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, the Costa Book of the Year, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction. She is a frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine, and lives in Suffolk, England. She appeared at Schlitz Audubon, in conjunction with Boswell, to share her work in 2016.