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Tag: book club

January 24, 2026 @ 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Initiatives

Public Arts Programs
Free

Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods

21850 Riverwoods Rd.
Riverwoods, IL 60015 United States + Google Map
224.633.2424

Nature Book Club: January

The Brushwood Nature Book Club is a space to talk about and explore nature literature in a friendly environment. Each meeting includes discussion, creative writing, and art activities to engage with the themes of the chosen book, led by Brushwood’s Poet-in-Residence Kathryn Haydon, and writer-artist Megan Donahue. 

Our January book will be Bird Cottage by Eva Meijer.

Bird Cottage is a novel based on the true story of a remarkable woman, her lifelong relationship with birds and the joy she drew from it.

Len Howard was forty years old when she decided to leave her London life and loves behind, retire to the English countryside and devote the rest of her days to her one true passion: birds.

Moving to a small cottage in Sussex, she wrote two bestselling books, astonishing the world with her observations on the tits, robins, sparrows and other birds that lived nearby, flew freely in and out of her windows, and would even perch on her shoulder as she typed.

This moving novel imagines the story of this remarkable woman’s decision to defy society’s expectations, and the joy she drew from her extraordinary relationship with the natural world.

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November 22 @ 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Initiatives

Public Arts Programs
Free

Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods

21850 Riverwoods Rd.
Riverwoods, IL 60015 United States + Google Map
224.633.2424

Nature Book Club: November

The Brushwood Nature Book Club is a space to talk about and explore nature literature in a friendly environment. Each meeting includes discussion, creative writing, and art activities to engage with the themes of the chosen book, led by Brushwood’s Poet-in-Residence Kathryn Haydon, and writer-artist Megan Donahue. 

Our November book will be Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison by poet Ted Kooser.

In the late 1990s, when poet Ted Kooser was recovering from cancer surgery, he started sending postcards to his friend Jim Harrison, a novelist known for Legends of the Fall and numerous other books. On each postcard, he wrote a poem. Harrison did the same in return. In 2001, Kooser turned his half of the exchange into Winter Morning Walks: 100 Postcards to Jim Harrison, a collection of engaging, witty, clever, insightful poems that serve simultaneously as snapshots of a friendship and a view into a poet’s daily observations.

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October 25 @ 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Initiatives

Public Arts Programs
Free

Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods

21850 Riverwoods Rd.
Riverwoods, IL 60015 United States + Google Map
224.633.2424

Nature Book Club: The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating

The Brushwood Nature Book Club is a space to talk about and explore nature literature in a friendly environment. Each meeting includes discussion, creative writing, and art activities to engage with the themes of the chosen book, led by Brushwood’s Poet-in-Residence Kathryn Haydon, and writer-artist Megan Donahue. 

For our October meeting, we’ll be reading Elisabeth Tova Bailey’s The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating.

Elisabeth Tova Bailey tells the inspiring and intimate story of her year-long encounter with a Neohelix albolabris—a common forest snail. While an illness keeps her bedridden, Bailey watches as the snail takes up residence on her nightstand. Intrigued by its molluscan anatomy, cryptic defenses, clear decision making ability, hydraulic locomotion, and mysterious courtship activities, Bailey becomes an astute and amused observer. The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating is a remarkable journey of survival and resilience, showing us how a small part of the natural world illuminates our own human existence.

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September 27 @ 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Initiatives

Public Arts Programs
Free

Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods

21850 Riverwoods Rd.
Riverwoods, IL 60015 United States + Google Map
224.633.2424

Nature Book Club: The Serviceberry

The Brushwood Nature Book Club is a place to talk about and explore nature literature in a friendly environment. Each meeting includes discussion, creative writing, and art activities to engage with the themes of the chosen book, led by Brushwood’s Poet-in-Residence Kathryn Haydon, and writer-artist Megan Donahue. 

Our summer series of meetings is focused on the work of the 2025 Smith Nature Symposium Honoree, Robin Wall Kimmerer. In July and August, we’ll read Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, and in September, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. 

Receive 15% off of the purchase price of the books at Lake Forest Book Store when you mention Brushwood Nature Book Club or Kathryn Haydon! Copies of the books can be purchased online at the links below:

The Serviceberry

Braiding Sweetgrass

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August 23 @ 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Initiatives

Public Arts Programs
Free

Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods

21850 Riverwoods Rd.
Riverwoods, IL 60015 United States + Google Map
224.633.2424

Nature Book Club: Braiding Sweetgrass (Part 2)

The Brushwood Nature Book Club is a place to talk about and explore nature literature in a friendly environment. Each meeting includes discussion, creative writing, and art activities to engage with the themes of the chosen book, led by Brushwood’s Poet-in-Residence Kathryn Haydon, and writer-artist Megan Donahue. 

Our summer series of meetings is focused on the work of the 2025 Smith Nature Symposium Honoree, Robin Wall Kimmerer. In July and August, we’ll read Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, and in September, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. 

Receive 15% off of the purchase price of the books at Lake Forest Book Store when you mention Brushwood Nature Book Club or Kathryn Haydon! Copies of the books can be purchased online at the links below:

The Serviceberry

Braiding Sweetgrass

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July 26 @ 10:00 am – 11:30 am

Initiatives

Public Arts Programs
Free

Brushwood Center at Ryerson Woods

21850 Riverwoods Rd.
Riverwoods, IL 60015 United States + Google Map
224.633.2424

Nature Book Club: Braiding Sweetgrass (Part 1)

The Brushwood Nature Book Club is a place to talk about and explore nature literature in a friendly environment. Each meeting includes discussion, creative writing, and art activities to engage with the themes of the chosen book, led by Brushwood’s Poet-in-Residence Kathryn Haydon, and writer-artist Megan Donahue. 

Our summer series of meetings is focused on the work of the 2025 Smith Nature Symposium Honoree, Robin Wall Kimmerer. In July and August, we’ll read Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge and the Teachings of Plants, and in September, The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World. 

Receive 15% off of the purchase price of the books at Lake Forest Book Store when you mention Brushwood Nature Book Club or Kathryn Haydon! Copies of the books can be purchased online at the links below:

The Serviceberry

Braiding Sweetgrass

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