Hosted by The Plant Initiative
Free - Optional Donation Recommended
This conversation with environmental humanities scholar and author Solvejg Nitzke will explore intriguing questions that are raised in her recent book Making Kin with Trees. A Cultural Poetics of Interspecies Care such as: Is it ok for scientists to be, or to admit to be, tree huggers? What does referring to oneself (even ironically) as a "tree hugger" reveal about one’s stance toward trees, such as their potential sentience? Are there ways in which science and storytelling should or shouldn’t be connected?
What are the barriers between intellectual and emotional connections with trees, and what are the reasons for and results of these barriers? How does science and nature writing about trees impact caring about trees? Are there ways in which non-fictional writing about trees can foster future co-existence?
The conversation will be moderated by Laura Pustarfi, a Plant Initiative board member.
Join us for this free interactive program!
There will be time for questions from the audience following the discussion. This free program will be livestreamed with a link to be sent to participants before the event and will also be recorded and available for viewing online afterwards.
About Solvejg Nitzke
Dr. Solvejg Nitzke is interim professor of comparative literature at Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany. Her research focuses on the production of knowledge under precarious circumstances. She writes about science fiction, catastrophes, climate change, nature writing and literary and cultural plant studies.
Solvejg's recent publications include: Plant Poetics. Literary Forms and Functions of the Vegetal (edited with Joela Jacobs and Isabel Kranz, Brill 2025); Making Kin with Trees. A Cultural Poetics of Interspecies Care (Palgrave Macmillan, October 2025) and her nature writing monograph The Elegance of Ferns. Portrait of a Botanical Marvel (translated by Helge Dascher) which will be published with Greystone Books in May 2026.
More about Making Kin with Trees: A Cultural Poetics of Interspecies Care
This book analyzes how trees act as mediators of interspecies relationships in popular science writing and creative nonfiction. Making Kin with Trees argues that trees emerge as agents of “arboreal poetics” shaping not only fictional but also material interactions. Following how speculative care practices infuse scientific and poetic texts, formatting practices of reading, sensing, knowing, and communicating (with) trees while affirming both cultural and scientific meaning making processes.
This book shows how arboreal thinking connects and might ultimately require breaking down the barrier between fact and fiction, human and plant, onlooker and artwork. This book will be of interest to audiences based in fields including environmental humanities, science and technology studies and ecocriticism, and everyone engaged in science communication and interested in the relationship between scientific fact and narrative.
A 20% discount is available for books purchased directly from the publisher at this link using the coupon code PALAUT.