Join Laurie Hertzel, Star Tribune book editor, Hailey Sauer, U of MN PhD student and researcher at the St. Croix Watershed Research Station in Marine, and Louisa Bradtmiller, Associate Professor in the Department of Environmental Studies at Macalester College for an online discussion of the ArtReach NEA Big Read book of the year, Lab Girl by Hope Jahren. Please register to participate in the program held online through Zoom. Zoom login information will be sent to registrants.

Geobiologist Hope Jahren has spent her life studying trees, flowers, seeds and soil. Lab Girl is her revelatory treatise on plant life—but it is also a celebration of the lifelong curiosity, humility and passion that drive every scientist. In these pages, Hope takes us back to her Minnesota childhood, where she spent hours in unfettered play in her father’s college laboratory. She tells us how she found a sanctuary in science, learning to perform lab work “with both the heart and the hands.” She introduces us to Bill, her brilliant, eccentric lab manager. And she extends the mantle of scientist to each one of her readers, inviting us to join her in observing and protecting our environment. Warm, luminous, compulsively readable, Lab Girl vividly demonstrates the mountains that we can move when love and work come together.

The discussion is offered as part of April’s NEA Big Read in the St. Croix Valley, a one book, one community program that brings together residents from throughout the St. Croix Valley around a common book. For more Big Read events in the valley, go to https://www.artreachstcroix.org/bigread/.

NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest. NEA Big Read is designed to broaden our understanding of our world, our communities, and ourselves through the joy of sharing a good book. ArtReach St. Croix is presenting the NEA Big Read in the St. Croix Valley in conjunction with core program partners Valley Bookseller, Stillwater Public Library, St. Croix Festival Theatre, UW River Falls, River Falls Public Library and library branches located in communities between St. Croix Falls, WI and Hastings, MN.