Join author Deborah Lee Luskin and Harris Center naturalist and writer Susie Spikol as they discuss Luskin’s newest book, Reviving Artemis: The Making of a Huntress. This new memoir is the unlikely story of a woman raised in mid-twentieth-century suburbia who lived in New York City as a young adult and moved to Vermont in 1984. For more than thirty years, she raised domestic livestock, kept bees, and cultivated fruits and vegetables while teaching literature and telling stories. But when she turned sixty, something shifted. Luskin was overtaken by a primal urge to step out of the garden, off the blazed trails, and into untracked forest by learning to hunt deer.

Deeply personal, lyrically told, and funny, Reviving Artemis reveals Luskin’s ambivalence about guns and her fear of entering the forest alone in the dark. She persisted, using her literary acumen to read the forest and, as thoughtfully as she hunts for words, to hunt for deer. With the stories of Artemis, goddess of the hunt, childbirth, and wild nature to inspire her, Luskin became a huntress, determined to age fiercely and compelled to tell this story of finding her place in the natural world.

5:30 to 6:30 p.m. at the Harris Center. Space is limited, and registration is required. For more information, including questions about accessibility, contact Susie.

Co-sponsored by the Harris Center for Conservation Education and the Toadstool Bookshop.

About Deborah Lee Luskin

Deborah moved from New York City to Vermont in 1984 to write, keep bees, and raise daughters. She has been an editorial columnist, radio commentator, pen-for-hire, and blogger. Her first novel, Into the Wilderness, won the Independent Publishers Gold Medal for Regional Fiction. Luskin has also enjoyed a long career as an educator, teaching writing and literature-based humanities classes to gifted elementary writers, college students, new adult readers, life-long learners, healthcare workers, and prison inmates. She holds a PhD in English Literature and expected to become an academic, not a deer hunter. She lives in Vermont with her husband, their dog, usually a cat, and a variable number of chickens.