On Sunday July 14, at 11 a.m., the Monadnock Summer Lyceum welcomes author and professor and speaker Leila Philip to Peterborough Unitarian Universalist Church, 25 Main St.

The topic will be her 2022 book “Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America.” Beyond building dams, the beavers were historically financially valued and trapped to near extinction by fur traders. Though the beaver is Canada’s official animal, it was once  reviled as a “dentally defective rat.” Today, however, beavers can play a role in America’s ecological future by combating floods, wildfires and drought.

Philip is a graduate of Princeton University with an A.B. in comparative literature and a fifth-year degree in East Asian Studies, once apprenticed to a master potter in Kyushu and earned an MFA at Columbia University.  In addition, she has taught writing and literature at Princeton University, Columbia University and Emerson College. 

In 2004 she joined the College of the Holy Cross English Department to teach in both the creative writing and environmental studies programs. Outside the academic world, she has worked in the Oregon mountains with a tree-planting cooperative, worked during lambing season on a sheep ranch and worked summers as a cheetah ranger.

Her honors and awards include a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship, 2014 Pushcart Prize in Literature nomination for “Water Rising,” 2020 Society of Environmental Journalists Story Grant Award and inclusion as a travel guide of Japan by National Geographic.

Moderating the program will be Susie Spikol, naturalist at the Harris Center for Conservation Education in Hancock. She also has field experience and has written about her outdoor encounters that share how to prowl an owl, make snail slime and catch a frog barehanded. 

People who cannot make the programcan watch online at monadnocklyceum.org. The Sopranos, a woodwind ensemble led by Mary Seaver, will provide welcome music beginning at 10:30 a.m.