LIAM O'BRIEN

Copperfield’s Books welcomes Liam O’Brien for Butterflies of the Bay Area! Reading, Q&A, and signing. Free event—registration recommended.

SANTA ROSA --

Copperfield's Books is honored to welcome illustrator and conservationist Liam O'Brien to Montgomery Village in celebration of his gorgeous book - Butterflies of the Bay Area and (Slightly) Beyond: An Illustrated Guide!

Join us for a passionate reading and discussion followed by an audience Q&A and book signing.

Registration recommended for seating. Free and open to the public.

An illustrated obsession, a guidebook, a kaleidoscope of life on the wing.

"If you live in the Bay Area and wish to know the butterflies, this is the only field guide you'll ever need." --Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift

Liam O'Brien has spent three decades chasing, learning about, protecting, occasionally catching, and always loving butterflies. Here, he shares his capacious knowledge of California butterflies through a treasure trove of stories and 700 gorgeous, hand-drawn illustrations--featuring both adult forms and caterpillars--of the 135 species that live in the greater Bay Area.

This sumptuous book also shares practical tips for finding and identifying all the butterflies who call the Bay Area home. Learn which plants nurture Silver-spotted Skippers, which trail to hike to see Swallowtails flitting creek-side, and why so many butterflies cluster on hilltops. Share in the joy that O'Brien brings to the study of butterflies, and join the community scientists contributing to our understanding of Monarchs, Metalmarks, and Marbles--and what they need to survive and thrive in our busy Bay Area.

Author: Liam O’Brien is an illustrator, lepidopterist, and conservationist. When not writing his monthly Flying Pansy column for Bay Nature Magazine’s website, he’s primarily working to protect the endangered Mission blue butterfly for the National Park Service in the Marin Headlands. Liam was a 2014 Bay Nature Local Hero Award recipient for Environmental Education. Liam’s first book on butterflies for Heyday Press, “Butterflies of the Bay Area (And Slightly Beyond)” is available at booksellers now.

Praise:

"This comprehensive and gorgeous book is so full of reverence for the prettier flying insects in our midst, so lacking in pretension, and so easy to understand, it''l inspire even the most fervent city-dwellers to get outside and find the little buggers." —KQED

"O'Brien has produced a comprehensive but nontraditional guide to local butterflies, one that combines accurate and detailed scientific information with anecdotes, many funny, and gorgeous paintings that took three years to complete." —East Bay Express

"In his book, O'Brien works to set the record straight on a few misconceptions about butterflies in general. In an intentional subversion of the field guide status quo, his drawings put the female morphology front and center." —Mission Local

"If you live in the Bay Area and wish to know the butterflies, this is the only field guide you'll ever need. Liam O'Brien is a passionate observer, a talented artist and a dedicated ecologist who, among other things, helped reintroduce the Variable Checkerspot to the Presidio. If they gave this book to every high school graduate in the state, it would be a classic within a generation." —Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift

"I can think of no other butterfly book that matches this one in sheer beauty, passion, and depth of local knowledge. Confiding, charming, and witty, Liam's reliable text is a grand gift to butterfly lovers, and his art is original among butterfly painters. A thing of wonder and joy." —Robert Michael Pyle, author of The National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Butterflies and Butterflies of the Pacific Northwest