Cost of Admission: Members FREE; Non-Members $10 suggested donation

This is an in-person event. Registration is required.

registration is required for this program

We are thrilled to welcome journalist Marguerite Holloway, who will speak about her book, Take to the Trees: A Story of Hope, Science and Self-Discovery in America's Imperiled Forests for this year's Annual Author Talk.  Books will be available for sale following the talk.

Marguerite Holloway arrives at the Women’s Tree Climbing Workshop as a climbing novice, but with a passion for trees and a deep concern about their future. Run by twin sister tree doctors Bear LeVangie and Melissa LeVangie Ingersoll, the workshop helps people—from everyday tree lovers to women arborists working in a largely male industry—develop impressive technical skills and ascend into the canopy. As Holloway tackles unfamiliar equipment and dizzying heights, she learns about the science of trees and tells the stories of charismatic species. She spotlights experts chronicling the great dying that is underway in forests around the world as trees face simultaneous and accelerating threats. As she climbs, Holloway also comes to understand the profound significance of trees in her relationship with her late mother and brother. The book’s rousing final chapter offers something new: a grander environmental and arboreal optimism. A lyrical work of memoir and reportage, Take to the Trees sounds the alarm about rapid arboreal decline while also offering hope about how we might care for our forests and ourselves.

Marguerite Holloway has written about the environment and science for publications including the New York Times, The New Yorker, Audubon, Wired and Scientific American, where she was a long-time writer and editor. She is a professor and the Director of Science and Environmental Journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University. She lives in New York City.

“The book in part is a sad tale of the damage we have done, but when Marguerite Holloway herself takes to the trees and learns from those who work with them, she plants the seeds of reconciliation between people and the nonhuman world. Readers should take the title literally and do likewise.”

—William Bryant Logan, author of Sprout Lands