in Chatsworth, Grey Highlands, Southgate, West Grey
January 11, 2023
BY SOUTHGREY.CA STAFF – Samantha Erin is a Part-time Instructor at Georgian Photo Alumni and Owner/Lead Photographer at Samantha Erin Photography in Dundalk. While her photography business keeps her busy throughout the year, she recently took a break to be inspired by Birds Art Life, a hybrid memoir by Kyo Maclear. It is another non-fiction entry into this year's Grey County Reads contest.
BY SOUTHGREY.CA STAFF — Birds Art Life is an introspective look at birding and the core lessons the author applies to art and life. Penguin Random House describes it as a philosophical meditation and an observational diary, Birds Art Life ponders the nature of creativity and the quest for a good and meaningful life, all the while celebrating the creative and liberating effects of keeping your eyes and ears wide open, and exploring what happens when you apply the core lessons of birding to other aspects of life.
Moving from the granular to the grand, Maclear imparts a deeply profound lesson in learning to see the significance in all the small things in the world — especially those we take for granted in the noise of the cityscape. In one sense, this is a book about disconnection — how our passions can buckle under the demands and emotions of daily life — and about reconnection: how the act of seeking passion and beauty in small ways can lead us to discover our most satisfying life.
On a deeper level, it takes up questions of how we are shaped and nurtured by our parallel passions, and how we might come to cherish both the world's pristine natural places and the blemished urban spaces where most of us live.
Kyo Maclear is an award-winning novelist, essayist, and children's author. Her books have been translated into eighteen languages and published in over twenty-five countries. Birds Art Life is a winner of the Trillium Book Award. Kyo holds a doctorate in environmental humanities and is on faculty at the University of Guelph Creative Writing MFA.
The Grey County Reads contest will begin on January 23.
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