Ranae Lenor Hanson will join the Austin Public Library for a reading and discussion of her book Watershed: Attending to Body and Earth in Distress on Tuesday, May 3, at 6:00 p.m. 

What if we tended to an ailing ecosystem just as we care for ourselves in the throes of a medical condition. This possibility is explored here, in a work that is at once a memoir of illness and health, a contemplation of the surrounding natural world in distress, and a reflection on how these come together in opportunities for healing.

"The credo ‘water is life’ has become a key environmental rallying cry in the years since Standing Rock, and this book helps us remember why. It recalls an American past, inhabits a global present, and imagines a working future—it will be an aid to many as they grapple with our difficult moment."—Bill McKibben, founder of 350.org and author of The End of Nature

"In a direct and often wise voice, through a series of moving, revealing, and entertaining stories, Watershed makes clear the connection between climate change and our own bodies. A difficult task in a culture that ignores the urgency of climate change while denying that human beings are part of nature. Difficult, but needed now while the earth that sustains our bodies is under assault. This book presents us with a paradoxical gift, the idea that we can make use of the aches and pains and illnesses plaguing so many of us to wake up and act in common cause with the earth."—Susan Griffin, author of Woman and Nature

"In a sea of books about the environment and personal health, Hanson’s Watershed demonstrates the remarkable degree to which they are the same topic." —Minnesota Brown