In-Person: The Mourner's Bestiary by Eiren Caffall

We are absolutely thrilled to host Eiren Caffall to celebrate the release of The Mourner's Bestiary! For this event, Eiren will be joined in conversation by Megan Stielstra.

Please note: This event is free to attend, but registration is required! Masks are required at this event.

A critically-acclaimed literary memoir braiding together environmental research and the personal journey of generational healing, grief, and chronic illness.

Author Eiren Caffall is the inheritor of a family legacy of two hundred years of genetic kidney disease and the mother of a child who may inherit that legacy.

A literary memoir on loss, chronic illness, and generational healing, Caffall’s The Mourner’s Bestiary is also a meditation on grief and survival told through the stories of animals in two collapsing marine ecosystems—the Gulf of Maine and the Long Island Sound—and the lives of a family facing a life-threatening illness on their shores.

The Gulf of Maine is the world’s fastest-warming marine ecosystem, and the Long Island Sound has been the site of conservation battles that predict the fights ahead for the Gulf.

"Beguiling, idiosyncratic [...] Caffall writes with plangent intensity about our responsibility toward the planet, and her eye for the wonder and beauty of ocean life pierces the illusion of disconnected existence." - Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant judges citation

"Eiren Caffall has produced some of the most powerful writing on the ecological crisis I have read anywhere. Caffall is a gifted writer, and this book is strong medicine." - Naomi Klein, author, social activist, and filmmaker

EIREN CAFFALL is a writer and musician based in Chicago. Her writing on loss and nature, oceans and extinction has appeared in Guernica, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Literary Hub, Al Jazeera, The Rumpus, and the anthology Elementals: Volume IV Fire, forthcoming in 2024 from The Center for Humans and Nature. She received a 2023 Whiting Award in Creative Nonfiction, a Social Justice News Nexus fellowship, and residencies at the Banff Centre, Millay Colony, MacDowell Colony (waitlisted), Hedgebrook, and Ragdale. Row House Publishing will release her first book and memoir, The Mourner’s Bestiary, in 2024, and her novel, All the Water in the World, is slated for release by St. Martin’s Press in early 2025.

Megan Stielstra is the author of three collections: Everyone Remain Calm, Once I Was Cool, and The Wrong Way to Save Your Life, and her work appears in the Best American Essays, New York Times, The Believer, Tin House, and elsewhere. A longtime company member with 2nd Story, she has told stories for National Public Radio, the Museum of Contemporary Art, and regularly with the Paper Machete live news magazine at the Green Mill. She teaches creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and is an editor with Northwestern University Press.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email events@womenandchildrenfirst.com.