In person: Cameron Walker book launch with guests

Join Milkweed Books as we welcome Cameron Walker to Minneapolis! Cameron’s work revolves around the human connection the world around them. Her newest short story collection, How to Capture Carbon, out with What Books Press, navigates climate change and loss with lyrical dreaminess. She has invited scientists and writers Kathryn Nuernberger, Kim Todd, Emily Sohn, and Marlene Zuk to speak with her around their work.

ABOUT THE BOOK

In a dozen radiant stories, award-winning author Cameron Walker brings readers to the water’s edge, where the known world collides with magic and with the mysterious depths of the human heart. Here, a pandemic turns children into sea creatures, a woman bakes unusual pie crusts after a natural disaster, and a young man sets off to see the world in a flying coat. Lyrical and dreamlike, How to Capture Carbon navigates the seas of a changing climate and the transformative power of loss—and of love.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

CAMERON WALKER is a writer whose work often focuses on the connections between people and the world around them. She is the author of three books, including the award-winning children’s book National Monuments of the U.S.A. and the debut short story collection How to Capture Carbon. Her essays and journalism have appeared in publications including The New York Times, Orion, High Country News, Aeon, Hakai, and Cancer Today. Her essay collection, Points of Light: Curious Essays on Science, Nature, and Other Wonders Along the Pacific Coast won the Tamaqua Award from Hidden River Press. Her short fiction has been published in The Missouri Review, PANK, New South, Carve, Flash Fiction Magazine, Terrain.org, and elsewhere. Her work has also received awards from from the American Society of Journalists & Authors, the American Institute of Physics, and Terrain.org. She is a part of several wonderful groups of writers, including the 30+ writers of Scilance (together, they wrote The Science Writer’s Handbook) and the bloggers at The Last Word On Nothing. She lives on California’s Central Coast with her husband, three kids, one dog, and an embarrassing number of surfboards.

KATHRYN NUERNBERGER is the author of the poetry collections, RUE, The End of Pink and Rag & Bone. She has also written the essay collections The Witch of Eye and Brief Interviews with the Romantic Past. Her awards include the James Laughlin Prize from the Academy of American Poets, an NEA fellowship, and “notable” essays in the Best American series. She has received fellowships from the H. J. Andrews Research Forest, the Bakken Museum of Electricity in Life, and the American Antiquarian Society for her creative writing about science and the history of science. She is a University of Minnesota RIO Artist-in-Residence – inspired by Marlene Zuk’s research on the Pacific field cricket and its parasitic fly she is writing poems about cricket behaviors, songs, and the nature of togetherness. HELD: Essays in Aftermaths, a collection of flash essays about symbiotic mutualisms and ways of being together, will be published by Sarabande Books in November 2025.

EMILY SOHN is a freelance journalist based in Minneapolis. Her writing has appeared in National Geographic, the New York Times, Nature, Scientific American, bioGraphic, and many other publications. She is working on a book about how animals are adapting to disruption.

KIM TODD is author of four books of literary nonfiction, focusing on forgotten stories about science, nature, and history. Her most recent book, Sensational: The Hidden History of America’s “Girl Stunt Reporters” argues that undercover journalists who exposed societal ills in the 1880s and 1890s shaped modern-day journalism and creative nonfiction. Other books include Sparrow; Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis; and Tinkering with Eden: a Natural History of Exotic Species in America. Her work won the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award and the PEN/Jerard Fund Award and was selected as a Minnesota Book Award Finalist and a Richard Frisbee Nonfiction Award Honoree. She is a professor in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota.

MARLENE ZUK is Regents Professor of ecology, evolution, and behavior at the University of Minnesota. She studies the evolution of animal sexual behavior and animal communication. The author of Paleofantasy and Sex on Six Legs, among other works, her latest book is Dancing Cockatoos and the Dead Man’s Test, which was longlisted for the 2023 PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Writing Award. She has received the BBVA Foundation Frontiers of Science Award, the Edward O. Wilson Naturalist Award, and is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, as well as an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences.

Event Venue

Open Book, 1011 Washington Avenue South, Minneapolis, United States