A Woven World: Making and Unmaking our Histories Through Science and Art

Alison Hawthorne Deming has built her long career on using poetry and prose to communicate about science and natural world. In her newest book, A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress, Deming explores the beauty and fragility of human making, and what it can tell us about our own natural histories. For whether we are dressmakers, fishermen, or writers, our culture is deeply interwoven with environment.

Join Alison and NHI Program Director Jessie Rack in a wide-ranging webinar conversation about how science and art can work together to effect change, and about the importance of knowing where we came from.

Webinar registration is required for access to Q&A.

The Natural History Institute’s Stories of Nature and Culture series explores ways that people and nature intersect in a wide variety of social, ecological, and personal contexts. In the 2021-2022 installment of this series, we hope to converse with artists, scientists, and writers willing to share their interpretation of and experience with the practice of natural history.

Watch the recorded video here. 

ALISON HAWTHORNE DEMING is Regents Professor at the University of Arizona, where she founded the Field Studies in Writing Program in 2015. She has an MFA from Vermont College and has been the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stegner Fellowship, two poetry fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and the Walt Whitman Award, among multiple other fellowships, residencies and prizes.

Her new book, A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress, was released by Counterpoint Press in August, 2021. Alison lives in Tucson and on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada.