Amy Irvine and Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer

Join author Amy Irvine at Explore Books and poet Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer for a discussion of Amy's memoir, Almost Animal and Rosemary's new collection of poetry, The Wonderment.

Almost Animal

A ferocious, incandescent memoir about motherhood, liberation, and the natural world—following one woman’s journey to reclaim her wildest self.

Growing up in Utah, a descendant of its earliest Mormon inhabitants, Amy Irvine spent her life fighting against the patriarchy that was her inheritance. The one place she felt truly herself was in the natural world. She climbed red rock, skied backcountry powder, and fought wildfires. But after the birth of her daughter, she found herself in a situation uncannily similar to those of her pioneer forebears: isolated on a remote Colorado mesa, with a husband who was often gone, a child who was frequently and mysteriously ill, and a once-remarkable life that was growing smaller and smaller.

After a case of postpartum depression so intense it resembled zoochosis, the madness of a trapped animal, Irvine began the process of unearthing her deepest self and finding a more authentic connection with her child. Over the years that followed, encounters with animals—wild and domestic, predator and prey—led her forward, from a horseback showdown with a mountain lion to a more intimate run-in with the misunderstood black widow. And searching for guidance, she looked to the women who came before her: the tough, complicated ancestors whose lives, Irvine learned, are a testament to the freedom, loneliness, and myth-making of the American West.

Gloriously written and fiercely felt, Almost Animal places Amy Irvine among our greatest writers on the bonds between the human and natural worlds—including Annie Dillard, Mary Oliver, and Wendell Berry—as well as contemporary chroniclers of the American West, from Cheryl Strayed to Tara Westover.

Amy Irvine is a sixth-generation Utahn who descends from the first Mormons to occupy the west. Her memoir Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land received the Orion Book Award and the Colorado Book Award. Her second book, Desert Cabal: A New Season in the Wilderness, is a feminist response to Edward Abbey’s Desert Solitaire, and during lockdown, Pam Houston and Irvine coauthored the epistolary Air Mail: Letters of Politics, Pandemics, and Place. Irvine’s essays have appeared in both The Best American Science and Nature Writing and The Best American Food Writing, as well as Orion, Outside, High Country News, Literary Hub, and Backpacker. She lives and writes on a remote mesa in southwest Colorado.

The Wonderment

Equal parts intimate and universal, humorous and heartfelt, The Wonderment invites us to revel in our humanity—not only the joyful parts, but those that wound us. With her signature vulnerability and courage, Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer uses wonder as a lens to re-see daily experiences, from our birth to our death, as treasure. These are poems borne of a continuous curiosity to explore not only what is here, but also what else is here—fierce and tender poems that help us fall in love with the world, even when it feels impossible.

Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer is a poet, teacher, speaker and writing facilitator who co-hosts Emerging Form, a podcast on creative process. Her daily audio series, The Poetic Path, is on the Ritual app. Her poems have appeared on Prairie Home Companion, PBS News Hour, O Magazine, Washington Post’s Book Club, and Carnegie Hall stage. Her recent collections are All the Honey and The Unfolding. The Wonderment comes out September, 2026. She serves as poet laureate for Evermore, helping others explore grief and love through poetry, and was in conversation with the world-renowned contemplative teacher, Tara Brach, on her eponymous podcast. Since 2006, she’s written a daily poem, sharing them on her blog, A Hundred Falling Veils.