Event Details

EnviroThursday - Space Place and Humanities Seminar Series

Speaker:  Erin Sharkey, Cultural Producer, Writer, Arts and Abolition Organizer, and Cultural Worker based in Minneapolis on Dakota land.

What are the politics of nature? Who owns it, where is it, what role does it play in our lives? Does it need to be tamed? Are we ourselves natural?  Erin Sharkey will discuss, A Darker Wilderness, a collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history. Each of these essays explores stories spanning hundreds of years and thousands of miles, traveling from roots to space–finding rich Blackness everywhere. Writers consider the significance of nature in their lives and on the role of nature in the lives of Black folks.

Erin Sharkey is the co-founder, with Junauda Petrus, of an experimental production collective called Free Black Dirt and a steward of The Fields at Rootsprings, a retreat and respite place centering BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folks in central MN. She is the editor of A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, an essay collection from Milkweed Editions (Feb 2023). Erin was recently awarded the Ashé Lab Fellowship from Penumbra Theatre, and the Black Seed Fellowship from Black Visions and the Headwaters Foundation. Currently, she teaches with Minnesota Prison Writers Workshop.

Refreshments provided.