Award-winning Montana poet Melissa Kwasny will visit Livingston’s Elk River Books to read from and discuss her new book of non-fiction, Putting on the Dog: The Animal Origins of What We Wear, on Thursday, May 2, at 7 p.m.
Putting on the Dog examines the historical and current use of animals in our clothing, taking a deep look at the often-controversial issues surrounding products made from leather, wool, silk, feathers, pearls and fur.
The publisher notes, “From silkworm plantations in Japan to mink farms off Denmark’s western coast, the leather tanneries of Texas and the pearl beds in the Sea of Cortés, the book explores the ways people work with animals and what we can learn from these exchanges.”
Publisher’s Weekly describes the book as “open-minded, complex, lyrical and unpretentious,” going on to state that, “Anyone interested in the production side of fashion―or any curious owner of a wool sweater or silk scarf―will find their interest rewarded.”
Kwasny is the author of six collections of poems, including Pictograph, Reading Novalis in Montana, and The Nine Senses, which contains a set of poems that won the Poetry Society of America’s 2008 Cecil Hemly Award. She is also the author of Earth Recitals: Essays on Image and Vision, and has edited multiple anthologies, including Toward the Open Field: Poets on the Art of Poetry 1800–1950 and, with M.L. Smoker, I Go to the Ruined Place: Contemporary Poems in Defense of Global Human Rights. Her work has appeared in numerous journals including Ploughshares, Boston Review, and The Arcadia Project: North American Postmodern Pastoral. She lives outside of Jefferson City, Montana, in the Elkhorn Mountains.
The event will be held upstairs at Elk River Books, 120 N. Main St. in Livingston. For more information, call 333-2330.
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