Presently living and teaching in Iowa, debut novelist Benjamin Percy hails from high desert country in central Oregon. That landscape plays a central role in his just-released novel, The Wilding (Graywolf Press). "Not your father's eco-novel. In compelling, image-driven prose, Benjamin Percy confounds the old polarities about wilderness and development by sending three generations of men into a doomed canyon, and letting so much hell break loose we can't tell the heroes from the villains—which feels exactly right. This is a dark, sly, slip-under-your-skin-and-stay-there kind of a book." - Pam Houston. Benjamin Percy is also the author of a book of stories, Refresh, Refresh, and the recipient of a Whiting Writers' Award and the Plimpton Prize.

The butterfly bard of Grays River, Washington makes this most welcome first visit to Elliott Bay's new home this evening. Internationally known for his scholarly—and popular—research and writings on butterflies, Bob Pyle is also known for his writings on this wet side of the mountains—its pleasures and mysteries. We believe the most recent was his chronicle of a year in his home place—Grays River—a lovely book on all the things that happen in one year in one place. Contrast that with the thousands of miles travel involved for his newest book, Mariposa Road: The First Butterfly Big Year (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt). By land and air, Bob Pyle set out to see how many species of the United States' 800 varieties he could see. Hawai'i, Alaska, and states hither and yon all figure. "Toss out any notion you might have had about butterfly watchers and meet Bob Pyle: scientist and daredevil, philosopher and magician, pioneer and rebel, and the finest companions for a vagabond journey. Follow him down the rip-roaring Mariposa Road and you'll never look at a butterfly, or the world, in the same way again." - Kenn Kaufman.