The Evolution of Fire by Angela Pelster

Angela Pelster comes to Lost City Books to discuss her second collection of essays, THE EVOLUTION OF FIRE.

About the book:

From the celebrated author of Limber, a luminous collection of essays about crisis, hope, and the decision to resist or embrace evolution--a book about time, for our time.

Crisis is an agent of evolution, and Angela Pelster knows what it means to evolve. As a child, she burned grass to keep weeds at bay and watched tadpoles transform. She basked in the warmth of her father's love but was burned by his rage, and she witnessed a sudden, unnamable change occur in her older sister after an encounter with a stranger in a white van. In adulthood, she survived the explosion of her marriage, the destruction of her burning home, and a year spent as the single mother of a toddler without a home of their own. And like us all, she has weathered the upheaval of our current atmosphere--political instability, climate change, mass extinction.

But in spite of the world's violence, Pelster manages to remain open to its beauty, deciding not to resist change, but to give herself over to it and let evolution make her into a new animal. She plumbs the depths of ancestral knowledge to uncover the scale of our ancient capacity for adaptation, from humankind's early harnessing of fire to the grandmothers responsible for our continued existence.

Meditative and curious, pulsing with fascination, fear, and the untamable human spirit, The Evolution of Fire contemplates who we are now and what we still might become.

About the author:

Angela Pelster is the author of the essay collection Limber, a winner of the Great Lakes Colleges Association Award for nonfiction. She was a 2021 McKnight Artist Fellow chosen by Hanif Abdurraqib. Her writing has appeared in LitHub, Orion, Ploughshares, Tin House, Granta, The Kenyon Review, and The Gettysburg Review, among others. She's been a Katherine Bakeless Nason Bread Loaf Fellow in nonfiction, a Minnesota State Arts Board grantee, and was an Iowa Arts fellow during her MFA at the University of Iowa. She currently teaches at Hamline University and lives in St. Paul, Minnesota

The conversation will be moderated by Charlotte Taylor Fryar.

Charlotte Taylor Fryar is a writer, historian, herbalist, and naturalist. She is the author of the essay collection, Potomac Fever: Reflections on the Nation's River, a finalist for the 2026 Reed Environmental Writing Award. Her essays, which have been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and recognized as notable in The Best American Essays, can be found in Orion, The Washington Post, Fourth Genre, Literary Hub, and the Southern Humanities Review, among other publications. She has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, and D.C.’s the Inner Loop, where she was a 2025 featured author.

Accessibility note: This event is up two flights of stairs and Lost City Books does not have an elevator. Please contact events@lostcitybookstore.com with questions.

Dato de accesibilidad: Este evento toma lugar en el segundo piso y Lost City Books no tiene ascensor. Favor de contactar events@lostcitybookstore.com con cualquiera duda.