Northshire Saratoga: Cara Benson - An Armsfull of Birds - with Diane Cameron

This is an in person event at our Saratoga Springs, NY store!

Cara Benson will discuss her story of recovery, love and loss with Diane Cameron. Moving through intensely personal terrain, An Armsfull of Birds is a climate memoir that tells the story of developing deeply held commitments to ourselves, to those we love, and ultimately to the ailing natural world.

Cara Benson did not come to love easy. As a low bottom addict, she crawled through subway tunnels and partnered with an abusive man. When she came face to face with her own death, she chose life. Her journey of survival led her into recovery, to climbing mountains, and ultimately to Jon, the man with whom she cultivated a relationship that began as “second chance lovers” and slowly developed into one as lifetime partners.

Years later, Benson unexpectedly found herself in devastation as she came to terms with losing Jon to suicide. As she retreated into her grief, she also retreated into the woods of upstate New York, exploring the forests not as the avid hiker she’d become in recovery, but as a meanderer who had lost her way. Here she found more grief in her observation of the effects of climate change.

“Cara Benson feels everything so deeply and tells her stories so honestly. Part recovery story, part eco-travelogue, part grief memoir, An Armsfull of Birds is a nuanced, thoughtful book about what it means to live fully, even when that means surviving your most beloved people. A memoir that will break your heart and put it back together again.” —Amy Shearn, award-winning author of Animal Instinct and Unseen City

Cara Benson's writing has been published in The New York Times, Boston Review, Orion Magazine, Sierra Magazine, The Brooklyn Rail, Terrain, and selected for Best American Poetry. Her first book, a collection of prose poems called (made), was well reviewed in The Huffington Post and The Brooklyn Rail, among other publications. She has received a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship and the bpNichol Award. Benson wrote a series on walking in the woods for the Best American Poetry website and taught poetry in a NY State Correctional Facility for eight years.

If you have questions about this or any other Northshire event, please write us at events@northshire.com.