Walking America, with Neil King Jr and Tom Zoellner

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Event details

Join two American authors as they trade tips and share insights about writing and walking at walk · listen · create’s Walking America. For our inaugural conversation on November 29, we are delighted to welcome authors Neil King Jr. and Tom Zoellner, to discuss their epic walks through America’s divided political landscapes in search of common ground.

Neil’s American Ramble: A Walk of Memory and Renewal (Mariner Books, 2023) recounts his 330-mile walk from his front door in Washington D.C. to New York City’s Central Park. Through historic battlefields, across the Mason-Dixon line, past Amish farms, atop a New Jersey trash mound, and across New York Harbor into Manhattan, Neil traveled deep into America’s past and present, uncovering buried histories and ultimately finding, in a time of mounting disunity, glimmers of hope.

“An indictment, a love letter, and a homecoming story,” Tom’s Rim to River: Looking into the Heart of Arizona (University of Arizona, 2023) follows his walk across the length of Arizona to come to terms with his home state’s myriad contradictions. Interspersing his own trek with probing essays on Arizona’s cultural landscape, Tom brings America’s 48th state — a place of extraordinary natural beauty, tragic history, and extreme politics – to vivid life.

Walking America is a quarterly series of conversations that pairs two American writers whose books share common themes. Ann de Forest, writer and editor of the anthology Ways of Walking (New Door Books, 2022), hosts and moderates the lively exchange, which touches on, among other topics, walking as a mode of research, walking as creative act, the challenges of writing about walking, as well as of walking to write. Audience questions and participation are encouraged!