Kaitlyn Teer in conversation with Chelsea Bieker
The Literary Arts Bookstore & Cafe is excited to welcome author Kaitlyn Teer to celebrate her latest essay collection, Little Apocalypses. Teer will be joined in conversation by local author Chelsea Bieker.
About the book:
A thoughtful, evocative, and urgently needed collection that reimagines the stories we tell about motherhood, climate change, and the end of the world as we know it.
How do you raise children in a world rapidly being reshaped by climate change? Do our narratives about climate change and care help us or hinder us in our efforts to get it right? Little Apocalypses seeks to explore these urgent questions as we navigate the existential predicament of parenting on a planet in crisis.
In this collection of beautifully crafted essays, Kaitlyn Teer—herself the mother of two young children—blends personal narrative, cultural analysis, and wide-ranging, multi-disciplinary research to offer new ways for readers to think more deeply and more hopefully about the radical possibilities of caregiving to bring a more just and sustainable future into being. In “World Without End” Teer examines the apocalyptic rhetoric that shapes our understanding of the climate crisis and shows us where to find new stories that can shape our imaginations of what’s still possible. In “Mother of All Messes” Teer considers the pressures to perform green motherhood and calls for refocusing efforts to collective action on for mutual flourishing. Teer’s writing overflows with love for her children, her community, and the natural world, and offers an invitation to face the uncertain future with curiosity and imagination.
A thoughtful and eye-opening look at the power of caregiving in crisis, Little Apocalypses is a call to action—an invitation to parents to become active participants in carving a different path forward for all of us, our children, and our planet.
Kaitlyn Teer
Kaitlyn Teer is a senior editor at Cup of Jo. Her essays have appeared in Orion, Catapult, and Electric Lit and won prizes from Fourth Genre and Prairie Schooner. Her work has been selected as an Editor's Pick by Longreads, recognized as notable by Best American Essays, and received a Pushcart Prize special mention. She has taught writing at Western Washington University and lives in Bellingham, Washington, with her husband and two children.
Chelsea Bieker
Chelsea Bieker is the author of the debut novel GODSHOT which was longlisted for The Center For Fiction’s First Novel Prize, and named a Barnes and Noble Pick of the Month. Her story collection, HEARTBROKE won the California Book Award and was a New York Times “Best California Book of 2022” and an NPR Best Book of the Year. Her writing has appeared in The Paris Review, Granta, The Cut, Wall Street Journal, McSweeney’s, Los Angeles Review of Books, and others. She is the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writers’ Award, as well as residencies from MacDowell and Tin House Books. Originally from California’s Central Valley, she lives in Portland, Oregon with her husband and two children. Her newest novel, MADWOMAN is forthcoming from Little, Brown.
