TUFTONBORO — The Friends of the Tuftonboro Library will host national bestselling author Sy Montgomery at a luncheon on Saturday, Sept. 13. She will be joined by illustrator Matt Patterson.
Montgomery and Patterson are naturalists, adventurers, and creative collaborators. Montgomery has published over 30 acclaimed nonfiction books for adults and children and received numerous honors, including lifetime achievement awards from the Humane Society and the New England Booksellers Association.
While researching her books, Montgomery has been chased by an angry silverback gorilla in Rwanda, hunted by a tiger in India, and swam with piranhas, electric eels, and pink dolphins in the Amazon. Her work has taken her from the cloud forest of Papua New Guinea for a book on tree kangaroos to the Altai Mountains of the Gobi for another on snow leopards.
In “The Soul of an Octopus” (a National Book Award finalist), Montgomery befriended octopuses at the New England aquarium and scuba dove with wild octopuses in Mexico and French Polynesia. Her most recent national bestseller, “Of Time and Turtles” (co-authored with Patterson), features a 42-pound wild snapping turtle named Fire Chief, who shows his extraordinary trust by allowing her to feed him by hand.
Patterson’s illustrations have been featured in several books and magazines, including Yankee Magazine and Fine Art Connoisseur. He is the recipient of the Roger Tory Peterson Wild American Art Award, National Outdoor Book Award for Nature and the Environment, and other honors.
For more information, visit tuftonborolibrary.org/event/author-luncheon.