Mark your calendars, East Coasters: Orion is Boston-bound during the first week of March. Please join Orion staff and fellow readers on Wednesday, March 6, in Davis Square in Somerville for an evening of informal mingling and snacks. Find us at:
Orleans
65 Holland Street
Somerville, MA
from 6 to 8 p.m.
We’ll have a few copies of the March/April 2013 issue hot off the press, plus the three new additions to the Orion Reader series, for people to preview and purchase.
No need to RSVP, but if you have questions about the reader meet-up, please contact Emily Glaser, Orion’s communications associate, at eglaser@orionmagazine.org.
March 6 is also the first day of this year’s Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston (the event runs through the 9th). Attending? Be sure to stop by one of the several panels hosted by Orion editors and authors.
The Artist as Activist: On Seeing and Saving the Natural World
Thursday, 10:30–11:45 a.m.
Room 208, Level 2
Hynes Convention Center
with Tom Montgomery Fate, Alexis Rizzuto, Jennifer Sahn, Jeffrey S. Cramer, John T. Price
In the 19th century, inspired by Emerson’s essay, “Nature,” Henry David Thoreau initiated a tradition of the nature writer as observer-artist. Today, that tradition continues, but amid a natural world that has been nearly devastated by our own species. This panel of writers and editors will explore the evolving role of the nature writer as artist and activist—how seeing the world and saving the world are part of the same work.
New Writing from Orion
Friday, 3:00–4:15 p.m.
Room 208, Level 2
Hynes Convention Center
with Jennifer Sahn, Pam Houston, Chris Dombrowski, Joe Wilkins, Glenis Redmond
The Orion editors believe that people are a part of nature and that the environment is everything that is—which translates into a broad mandate for a literary magazine, allowing Orion to publish the best writing at the intersection of ecology and culture. Join us as four recent contributors read and discuss their essays and short stories from Orion.
Levity and Gravity
Saturday, 4:30–5:45 p.m.
Room 110, Plaza Level
Hynes Convention Center
with Hannah Fries, Afaa M. Weaver, Katrina Vandenberg, Alison Hawthorne Deming
In an essay on the literary quality of lightness, Italo Calvino writes of “the sudden agile leap of the poet-philosopher who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing that with all his gravity he has the secret of lightness.” What is that secret? To Calvino, it’s not about subject so much as style and prosody—a way to levitate or make carry-able (bearable) “heavy” material. This panel explores the elusive concept of lightness, how it’s achieved, and why it might be vital in our time.
Also on Saturday, the Bookfair is free and open to the public all day—so come pick out some new reading material and say hello to Orion at table K10.
See you there!