Helen Thorpe and Eric Siegel

Helen Thorpe is a journalist who has written three books of narrative nonfiction about people who have changed countries: immigrants seeking legal status, military veterans returning home from conflict, and refugees in the midst of resettlement. She has also published a collection of linked essays about her family’s moves from Ireland to England and then the United States, and the attempt to maintain ties with aunts, uncles, cousins, and grandparents on the other side of the Atlantic. The New Yorker has said, “Thorpe is meticulously observant, always attuned to the poignant ironies of her topic.”

Eric Siegel is an environmental journalist, poet, and naturalist whose writing about books and Western landscapes has most recently appeared in the environmental magazine High Country News and Publisher’s Weekly. In addition to teaching environmental literature and writing at the Colorado School of Mines, Eric has also worked in the high country of Colorado and Montana for various environmental organizations, helping others explore landscape and language too. He’s completed land-based artist residencies with the Jentel Foundation in Wyoming and Western Montana Creative Initiatives, received support from the Kenyon Review and Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conferences, and is always getting lost… in bookstores and libraries.