Tonight at Bird & Beckett! 7pm.
If you can’t make it to the shop, catch the live stream on Bird & Beckett’s Facebook page or YouTube channel.

We are pleased to host Carol Gigliotti, author of The Creative Lives of Animals, offering “intimate glimpses of creativity in the lives of animals from elephants to alligators to ants.” She’ll present her book in dialog with Calder G. Lorenz, her son and the author One Way Down (or Another), “a novel content to follow its narrator’s lead, not looking for trouble but sometimes finding it, thriving instead on the strength of his rich inner dilemmas.” (Seattle Book Review).

Less interested in artificial intelligence than in the creativity of sentient beings other than homo sapiens, and already know something of trees and mushrooms? Then this is the place to be Thursday evening!

Take a listen to this NPR Morning Edition interview with Carol aired on November 24th.

The morning of her Bird & Beckett reading, Thursday 12/8, Carol will taping an interview for NPR’s podcast called “The Pulse” to be aired down the line. Just one in a succession of podcasts that folks have done with her since the book’s release.

The Creative Lives of Animals has been favorably reviewed in the Wall Street Journal, The Globe and Mail, and Scientific American, as well as EcoLit Books and elsewhere.

“In this intriguing investigation of animal ingenuity, Gigliotti contemplates the novelty and meaning of creativity along with some essential elements, such as curiosity, flexibility, and persistence.” –Booklist

“From playfully bowing puppies to seductively singing alligators, Carol Gigliotti combines examples from interviews with scientists and excerpts of previously published books in this delightful index of animal inventiveness.” –Fionna M. D. Samuels, Scientific American

Drawing on a growing body of scientific research, Carol Gigliotti unpacks examples of creativity demonstrated by animals through the lens of the creative process, an important component of creative behavior, and offers new thinking on animal intelligence, emotion, and self-awareness. With examples of the elaborate dams built by beavers or the lavishly decorated bowers of bowerbirds, Gigliotti provides a new perspective on animals as agents in their own lives, as valuable contributors to their world and ours, and as guides in understanding how creativity may contribute to conserving the natural world. Presenting a powerful argument for the importance of recognizing animals as individuals and as creators of a healthy, biodiverse world, this book offers insights into both the established and emerging questions about the creativity of animals.

Author Carol Gigliotti is Professor Emerita of Dynamic Media and Critical and Cultural Studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She is the editor of Leonardo’s Choice: Genetic Technologies and Animals.

The Creative Lives of Animals is newly published (November 2022) by New York University Press.