Brown Pelican: Rien Fertel Book Signing and Reading

Gather with us in the Ocean Springs Community Center and listen to author and visiting professor Rien Fertel, who will be speaking on their new book, Brown Pelican.

The book is an expansive story of the brown pelican over the past century, combining history and first-person narrative to complicate, deconstruct, and reassemble our vision of the bird, the natural world, and ourselves. This inspiring talk and book signing explores the ever-evolving story of the brown pelican and cultivates hope amongst environmental peril with this bird's resilient journey.

11 - 11:30AM | Reception

11:30AM - 1PM | Discussion & Book Signing

Free to the public. RSVP required through pre-registration. Free beverages available.

About the book:

In this compelling book, Rien Fertel tells the story of humanity’s complicated and often brutal relationship with the brown pelican over the past century. This beloved bird with the mythically bottomless belly—to say nothing of its prodigious pouch—has been deemed a living fossil and the most dinosaur-like of creatures. The pelican adorns the Louisiana state flag, serves as a religious icon of sacrifice, and stars in the famous parting shot of Jurassic Park, but, most significantly, spotlights our tenuous connection with the environment in which it flies, feeds, and roosts—the coastal United States.

About the author:

Rien Fertel is a writer and teacher who lives in New Orleans. He is the author of three previous books: Drive-By Truckers’ Southern Rock Opera, The One True Bar-becue: Fire, Smoke, and the Pitmasters Who Cook the Whole Hog, and Imagining the Creole City: The Rise of Literary Culture in Nineteenth-Century New Orleans. Fertel is also a Visiting Professor of History at Tulane University, and holds a PhD in History from Tulane and an MA from the New School for Social Research.

Rien Fertel: https://www.rienfertel.com/

Book: https://www.walterandersonmuseum.org/shop/Brown-Pelican-By-Rien-Fertel-p524564598