MANSFIELD, PA – When Everything Beyond the Walls is Wild – Being a Woman Outdoors in America, written by Mansfield University’s Lilace Mellin Guignard, has been released from Texas A&M University Press.
Guignard is an instructor of creative writing, outdoor recreation leadership, and women’s studies. She is an award-winning poet; her published collection is titled Young at the Time of Letting Go, her work has appeared in Poetry magazine, and she wrote A Field Guide to the Norton Book of Nature Writing.
In When Everything Beyond the Walls Is Wild, Guignard draws from emblematic moments and relationships in her own life to explore issues of gender, recreation, and environmental conservation. Born into a suburban family, Guignard wanted to get up close and personal with iconic American landscapes, but social pressures and cautionary tales told her that these spaces were not meant for her as a woman.
“I feel lucky to have found an academic press that didn’t want jargon and encouraged me to blur genres by combining memoir, scholarship, and lyrical writing,” Guignard said. “This book covers three decades and a lot of different activities and geographies. My relationship with the outdoors shaped who I was as a single woman through marriage through motherhood and now at middle age–what I call ‘the age of adventure.’”
Guignard has several appearances scheduled, including a reading on campus on Tuesday, April 23 at noon in 104 Allen Hall–free and open to the public, and a book launch at Card Carrying Books & Gifts in Corning, NY on Tuesday April 25, 5-7 p.m.
When Everything Beyond the Walls Is Wild is now on sale at the Mountie Den Campus Bookstore in Alumni Hall, From My Shelf Books in Wellsboro or online at Amazon.com and TAMU Press.