Wild Life: An Explorer's Guide to the World's Living Wonders
Celebrate the wonders of the natural world—from fungi to raptors and more—at the Portland Book Festival!
Join Cara Giaimo, co-author of Atlas Obscura Wild Life, artist Julie Beeler, Sidney Campbell of Cascades Raptor Center and host Elena Pasarello for a special conversation about the most extraordinary stories you've never heard of the world’s living wonders. Whether you're a nature enthusiast, an avid reader, or simply curious about the world around you, don't miss this opportunity to delve into the wild and wonderful natural world with Atlas Obscura.
From the curious minds of Atlas Obscura, authors of #1 New York Times bestselling Atlas Obscura and Gastro Obscura, comes an unputdownable celebration of the world’s living wonders.
- Learn how dung beetles navigate by the stars, and trees communicate through their roots.
- Meet one of the strongest animals in the world: the puny peacock mantis shrimp.
- Pay your respects to a 44,000 year old shrub, float along flying rivers, and explore a garbage dump overseen by endangered storks.
- Examine old examples of bird song notation written on sheet music.
- Also, first person interviews: hear from a honey hunter and his avian partners, a scientist working to find the world’s only ocean-dwelling insects, and an offshore radio DJ who is at the heart of the local fishing community.
Featuring over 500 extraordinary plants, animals, and natural phenomena, with illustrations and photos on every page, the book takes readers around the globe—from Antarctic deserts to lush jungles, and into the deepest fathoms of the ocean and the hearts of our densest cities. Teeming with detail and wildly entertaining, Wild Life reinvigorates our sense of wonder, awe and amazement about the incredible creatures we share our planet with.
Appearing with Cara Giaimo, co-author of Atlas Obscura Wild Life:In Julie Beeler‘s Mushroom Color Atlas, discover the chromatic wonders of the fungi kingdom and the incredible spectrum of pigments and dyes that can be created from mushrooms.
More closely related to humans than they are to plants, fungi are fascinating organisms—and they are a rich resource for color collectors! Blending scientific detail, botanical illustrations, and creative inspiration, artist and educator Julie Beeler invites you to peek into her workroom as she introduces different types of dye mushrooms—from boletes to polypores to tooth fungi—and walks you through her color-harvesting process. Offering insightful tips on foraging and color distillation and a rainbow of color samples, Beeler peppers in down-to-earth advice on artistic experimentation and fascinating stories about the historical and personal connections between humans and nature, offering a fresh perspective on the magical world of mushrooms.
Cascades Raptor Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit nature center and wildlife hospital founded in 1987. It was incorporated in 1990 and moved to its current location on Spencer’s Butte in southwest Eugene in 1994.
Our mission is to foster connections between humans and birds of prey through:
- WILDLIFE REHABILITATION: Our wildlife hospital treats 400-700 patients every year, and is currently the only raptor-specific wildlife clinic in Oregon.
- PUBLIC EDUCATION: Each year, over 30,000 people visit our nature center, which is open year round and features nearly 40 resident education birds – one of the largest native North American raptor collections in the Pacific Northwest.
Moderated by Elena Passarello, author of Animals Strike Curious Poses.
Admission is free to this event with the purchase of a Portland Book Festival General Admission Pass!
Cara Giaimo lives in Somerville, MA, with her wife, Lilia, two cats, many plants, and uncountable neighborhood rats. A former staff writer at Atlas Obscura, Cara now covers our fellow species for the New York Times, Fabrikzeitung, Bloomberg Businessweek, and elsewhere. Her first book, Detector Dogs (with Christina Couch), was published by MIT Kids Press in 2022. She plays guitar in Sidebody.
Julie Beeler is an acclaimed designer, artist, and educator inspired by the natural world. Her work has been featured by The New York Times, Popular Science, The Smithsonian Institution and The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, among others. Julie created the Mushroom Color Atlas website to unveil and celebrate the resplendent chromatic universe hidden within the fungi kingdom, making it accessible to people around the world. Her book The Mushroom Color Atlas, recently published by Chronicle Books, is a comprehensive primer on the universe of colors lurking inside fungi. It is equal parts art book, field guide, and dye-making workshop. In every form her effort is a timeless reference that will be used for years to come. After a 20-year career at the vanguard of interactive design, Julie founded Bloom & Dye, a natural dye studio and farm in the Pacific Northwest ideally situated for foraging mushrooms, growing fresh-cut color, and creating fine art.
Elena Passarello is an actor, essayist, and recipient of a 2015 Whiting Award. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Paris Review, and The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2018, and has been translated into German, Italian, French, and Mandarin. She is the author of the essay collections Let Me Clear My Throat and Animals Strike Curious Poses, the latter of which won the 2018 Oregon Book Award in Creative Nonfiction and made the Best Books of 2017 lists in the New York Times, Guardian, and Publisher’s Weekly. Passarello teaches creative writing at Oregon State University and appears weekly on the PRX radio variety show Live Wire.
Cascades Raptor Center
Sidney Campbell grew up in southern California, developing a deep respect for wildlife conservation and animal ambassadors, watching her uncle work with elephants at the San Diego Zoo. She found her passion for raptors as an intern at the American Bald Eagle Foundation (ABEF) while earning her Bachelor of Science in Biology at the University of Alaska Southeast. A certified professional bird trainer, Sidney is passionate about working animal welfare.
Hans is a conservation bred Eurasian Eagle owl who hatched in April 2013. He has worked as an educator from the time he was just 40 days old, working first at a raptor center in rural Alaska before he moved to Cascades Raptor Center in 2023. In his years as an educator he has met hundreds of thousands of people, making a huge impact with his powerful flight.
