Event Details

Speaker:  Paul Bogard, Associate Professor of English, Hamline University

A starry night is one of nature’s most magical wonders. Yet in our artificially lit world, most of us no longer experience true darkness. In this talk based on his critically acclaimed book The End of Night, Paul Bogard seeks to restore our awareness of the spectacularly primal, wildly dark night sky and how it has influenced the human experience across everything from science to art. Using a blend of personal narrative, natural history, science, and astronomy, Paul shares the importance of darkness—what we’ve lost, what we still have, and what we might regain—and the simple ways we can reduce the brightness of our nights tonight.

Paul Bogard is the author of The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light and The Ground Beneath Us: From the Oldest Cities to the Last Wilderness, What Dirt Tells Us About Who We Are. His first children’s book What if Night? was published in late 2020. A native Minnesotan, Paul is now an associate professor of English at Hamline University in Saint Paul, Minnesota USA, where he teaches creative writing and environmental literature.

Refreshments provided.