'A Keeper of the Bees' author to speak at Faulkner County Library

The Faulkner County Library has announced that Allison Wallace, author of the book, "A Keeper of the Bees" will present an author discussion, book reading and signing a 7 p.m. Thursday.

This event will take place in the Meeting Room (west side) of the Faulkner County Library, 1900 Tyler St.

In "A Keeper of the Bees: Notes on Hive and Home" (Random House) Fulbright scholar and first-time author Allison Wallace approaches the popular topic of beekeeping from the perspectives of philosopher and scientist. The result is a mixture of personal memoir and exploration of the natural world, with musings that illuminate both human and honeybee behavior. Fascinated rather than annoyed by the bees keeping house next to her garden, she began to study them and even built a hive of her own.

Life in the woods did not stay peaceful for long, and she and her husband eventually left these first bees to establish new hives and a new home for themselves in rural Maine. When her marriage broke up some years later, she and her bees headed back South, this time to Arkansas.

Wallace is a companionable writer, as she reflects on all things honeybee, from their origin (one hundred million years ago) to how they function as a society of workers (all of the workers are female). She says honey is one of only two naturally occurring substances that serve their animal makers biologically as food, and only food (the other substance is milk). Stories about Wallace's efforts to keep and know honeybees are weaved with musings on human need for companionship, intimacy, meaningful work, and a connection to place that all creatures do their best to establish. Honeybees serve as the inspiration for Allison Wallace's insights on a wide variety of themes such as desire, regret, spirituality, evolution, ambition and memory. Wallace explores the biology of honeybees as well as the vagaries of human existence.

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Her conversational writing illuminates the many small and varied ways we are unavoidably connected to nature around us.

Wallace hails from the piney woods of southeastern Louisiana, in the upper toe of the "boot," right on the Pearl River and about an hour's drive from New Orleans. Having spent her childhood there and along coastal Texas and Mississippi, she went on to attend the University of Mississippi and later the University of North Carolina, where she completed doctoral work in American literature in 1992. Her first full-time faculty post, at Unity College in central Maine, lasted nine years, where she taught interdisciplinary humanities courses in the literature and history of the American land. All those cold, bitter New England springs eventually moved her to trace her way back South, via the Honors College at the University of Central Arkansas, where she has been since the fall of 2001minus a half year spent on a Fulbright grant at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan. As time permits, she enjoys reading, writing, hiking, canoeing, traveling, gardening, andof coursekeeping honeybees. Food and farming, as well as the art of the essay, remain her personal and professional passions.

This event is free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served. Books will be for sale for those interested. For more information, contact Sarah, the adult programming coordinator and reference librarian at 327-7482, or e-mail to: sarah@fcl.org.