‘A Year with the Seals’ book launch and signing

Back Cove Books is excited to host Alix Morris for the launch of A Year with the Seals on Tuesday, July 15th at 6:30pm! Alix will be in conversation with Lynda Doughty, Founding Executive Director of Marine Mammals of Maine. A portion of all sales for the event will be donated to MMoME. 

About the Book
Environmental journalist Alix Morris spends an eye-opening year getting to know these elusive, intelligent creatures, investigating the effects of their extraordinary return from the brink of extinction and how we can try to bring nature back into balance. It might be their large, strangely human eyes or their dog-like playfulness, but seals have long captured people’s interest and affection, making them the perfect candidate for an environmental cause, as well as the subject of decades of study. Alix Morris spends a year with these magnetic creatures and brings them to life on the page, season by season, as she learns about their intelligence, their relationships with each other, their ecosystems, and the changing climate. Morris also gets to know all of the competing interests in the intense debate about the newly recovered seal populations in our coastal waters, from local fishermen whose catch is often diminished by savvy seals, to tribes who once relied on seal-hunting for food, clothing, and medicine, to seal rescue workers and biologists, to surfers and swimmers now encountering seal-hunting sharks in coastal waters. A Year with the Seals is a rare look at what happens when conservation efforts actually work, and how human tampering with ecosystems continues to have unexpected consequences. But it’s also a gripping adventure story of a journalist determined to understand seals and our relationship with them for herself.

Alix Morris is a science writer in midcoast Maine. Her work has appeared in the Boston Globe Magazine, Smithsonian, Sierra Magazine, MIT Technology Review, Down East Magazine, and elsewhere, and she has graduate degrees in science writing from MIT and global health from Johns Hopkins.

Lynda Doughty founded Marine Mammals of Maine in 2011. Born and raised in Maine, Lynda always knew she wanted to work helping marine mammals and has led marine mammal response organizations for many years, including providing care for thousands of animals and opening Maine’s first seal triage center. Lynda was recognized by Portland Press Herald in 2014 as one of 10 Mainers to be thankful for and in 2021, she was named a CNN Hero.

To purchase books and RSVP (not required) visit https://backcovebooks.com/events/2715020250715