Rising: Virtual Book Discussion

This year's Reading Across Rhode Island (RARI) selection is Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. Rising is a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love. 

The ebook of Rising is available for simultaneous use on eZone now through June 13. There are no holds, no waiting. Borrow Rising now here.

We are hosting a virtual book discussion on Wednesday, June 24 at 7 pm via Zoom. Please register below. Email is required for the facilitator to send out group notices or communications. The Zoom link will be emailed to registrants on Monday, June 22. Please email information@barringtonlibrary.org if you do not receive a Zoom link at that time.

At this time, Barrington Public Library is still hosting all programs virtually until safe practices and procedures are in place. We will notify registrants if this program moves from virtual to in-person.

With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant--and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place.

Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice--a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago--with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities, Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins. 

Elizabeth Rush is the author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore and Still Lifes from a Vanishing City: Essays and Photographs from Yangon, Myanmar.  Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, among others. She received her MFA in nonfiction from Southern New Hampshire University, and teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University. 

Reading Across Rhode Island (RARI) is Rhode Island’s only One Book, One State program that focuses on a single book selected to stimulate meaningful discussions across our state. RARI is a program of the Rhode Island Center for the Book, a 501(c)(3) not for profit organization devoted to promoting personal and community enrichment by celebrating the art and heritage of reading, writing, making, and sharing books. 

Event Location: 
Virtual
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