Amy Irvine and Pam Houston

Amy Irvine and Pam Houston
Thursday Nov 12th, 2026
7:00 PM – 9:00 PM

We are thrilled to host Amy Irvine and Pam Houston for a conversation about their new books, Almost Animal A Memoir of Motherhood, Wildness, and the American West and Animals Taught Me Everything.

About Animals Taught Me Everything:

What can a wagging tail and soaring wings teach us about a life well lived? “A loving testament to the way animals can shape a life.” —PUBLISHERS WEEKLY (starred review) ★

From Icelandic mares and Irish wolfhounds to elephants, leopards, hyenas, and a desert-adapted lioness named Charlie, Pam Houston has learned life’s most important lessons from animals. How to play. How to rest. How to love. How to die. How to be present with the dying. How to be present with the living and with the Earth. How to find joy in the least likely places. How to find joy, literally, everywhere. With playful sincerity, Houston finds power and promise in the teachings of our fellow creatures and reminds us that animals are here for us, every day and everywhere.

About Almost Animal:

“Full throttle, full immersion, full honesty, all surrender.”—LESLIE JAMISON, AUTHOR OF THE EMPATHY EXAMS

“A starting place for healing our upended selves, families, culture, world.”—CRAIG CHILDS, AUTHOR OF THE ANIMAL DIALOGUES

A ferocious, incandescent memoir about motherhood, liberation, and the natural world—following one woman’s journey to reclaim her wildest self.

A descendant of Utah’s earliest Mormon inhabitants, Amy Irvine spent her young adulthood rebelling against the patriarchy that was her inheritance. She sought adventure outdoors, climbing granite walls, skiing backcountry powder, and fighting wildfires. She tested every limit imposed on her. But after the birth of her daughter, Irvine found herself in a situation uncannily similar to those of her pioneer forebears: isolated on a remote Colorado mesa, with a husband who was often gone, a child who was frequently and mysteriously ill, and a once remarkable life that was growing smaller and smaller.

After a case of postpartum depression so intense it resembled zoochosis, the madness of a trapped animal, Irvine began the process of coming back to the world and unearthing a deeper connection with her child. Over the years that followed, encounters with animals—wild and domestic, predator and prey—led her forward, from a horseback showdown with a mountain lion to a more intimate run-in with the misunderstood black widow. And searching for guidance, she looked to the women who came before her: the tough, complicated ancestors whose lives, Irvine learned, are a testament to the freedom, loneliness, and mythmaking of the American West.

Gloriously written and fiercely felt, Almost Animal places Amy Irvine among our greatest writers on the bonds between the human and natural worlds—including Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, and Wendell Berry—as well as contemporary chroniclers of the American West, from Cheryl Strayed to Tara Westover.