No Less Strange or Wonderful: Essays in Curiosity by A. Kendra Greene

Join us for an event with A. Kendra Greene to celebrate the release of No Less Strange or Wonderful: Essays in Curiosity. For this event, Greene will be joined in conversation by Lulu Miller.

Please note: This event is free to attend, but registration is required. Masks are required for our in-store events.

Exploding sharks, trees riding bicycles, a Hollywood-esque balloon dress, a giant sloth in costume, a stolen woodpecker, and a sentient bag of wasps—and remember: this is nonfiction.

Celebrated author and artist A. Kendra Greene’s No Less Strange or Wonderful is a brilliant and generous meditation—on the complex wonder of being alive, on how to pay attention to even the tiniest (sometimes strangest) details that glitter with insight, whimsy, and deep humanity, if only we’d really look.

In twenty-six sparkling essays, illuminated through both text and image, Greene is trying to make sense—of anything, really—but especially the things that matter most in life: love, connection, death, grief, the universe, meaning, nothingness, and everythingness. Through a series of encounters with strangers, children, and animals, the wild merges with the domestic; the everyday meets the sublime. Each essay returns readers to our smallest moments and our largest ones in a book that makes us realize—through its exuberant language, its playful curation, and its delightful associative leapfrogging—that they are, in fact, one in the same.

A. Kendra Greene is a writer and book artist. She is the author and illustrator most recently of No Less Strange or Wonderful (Tin House) and The Museum of Whales You Will Never See. Her work has come into being with fellowships from Fulbright, MacDowell, Yaddo, Dobie Paisano, and the Library Innovation Lab at Harvard.

Lulu Miller is the author of the international bestseller, Why Fish Don't Exist. She is the co-host of the podcast Radiolab (about science) and the kids podcast Terrestrials (about nature). Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Orion and beyond. She recently published her first children's book, Trucky Roads, which was a Kirkus Best Picture Book of 2024. She lives in Evanston with her wife and three kids.

Accessibility: This event is hosted at the bookstore, which is a wheelchair accessible space. Masks are required. Seating is on a first-come, first-serve basis. We have dimmable, non-fluorescent lights. To request ASL interpretation for this event, please email [email protected] by no later than 14 days before the event. For other questions or access needs, please email [email protected].

Host or Publisher Women & Children First