Join Penn State Sustainability for our final Sustainability Showcase of 2023-24 featuring Heather Swan, award-winning eco-poet and author whose second book from Penn State University Press, Where the Grass Still Sings, is being released in May 2024. Swan’s work celebrates the many tiny creatures that play crucial roles in our ecosystems—as well as the people on the front lines of the fight to save them. Weaving art and science with inspiring stories of people doing their part to protect insects and the environment, Swan takes readers around the globe to highlight practical solutions to safeguard our fragile planet.

Heather will be joining Penn State for several events, including these open to all:

• Keynote and Reading, Friday, March 22, at noon in Foster Auditorium, Paterno Library (virtual attendance is possible — register here).
• Nature Writing Workshop, Friday, March 22, at 4 p.m. in 201 Patterson Building, co-hosted with the Penn State Arboretum (space is limited) — register here
• Book Reading, Saturday, March 23, at 4 p.m. at Webster’s Bookstore Cáfe (can’t make it in person? — register here for a Zoom link).

Copies of her work will be available for sale at both the Friday keynote and the Saturday book reading.

Swan’s poetry has appeared in journals such as Poet Lore, Phoebe, Cold Mountain, The Raleigh Review, Basalt, About Place, Midwestern Gothic, The Hopper and anthologies such as Healing the Divide, New Poetry from the Midwest, and The Rewilding Anthology. Her chapbook, The Edge of Damage, was published by Parallel Press and won the Wisconsin Writers Chapbook Award, and her full collection, A Kinship with Ash, was published by Terrapin Books. Her nonfiction has appeared in journals such as Aeon, Catapult, The Learned Pig, Minding Nature, Edge Effects, Belt Magazine, and Resilience Journal. Her first book from Penn State University Press, Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field, won the Sigurd Olson Prize for Nature Writing in 2017. She teaches writing and environmental literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.