SHOWTIME
Wednesday, February 4 2026, 7:00pm
Doors open at 6pm
TICKETS
$45*
*Ticket Package includes a signed book (A Year with the Seals, $30, hardcover).
https://www.themusichall.org/events/alix-morris/
Evening’s Moderator: Jameson French
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. Her first book, A Year with the Seals, is supported by a grant from the Sloan Foundation.
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Special thanks to our Literary in The Lounge Presenting Sponsor, the University of New Hampshire, our Media Partner, New Hampshire Public Radio, and our Interconnections Presenting Sponsor, Kennebunk Savings Bank.
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![Alix Morris with "A Year with the Seals", 4 February | Event in Portsmouth | AllEvents](https://cdn-az.allevents.in/events9/banners/a90f4044a17dcf0dfc48e31f7844399f695a9aa850ebd5b0c26272edd2bd92bb-rimg-w1200-h675-dcbcd2de-gmir?v=1764142270 "Alix Morris with "A Year with the Seals", The Music Hall Lounge, Portsmouth, 4 February 2026 | AllEvents")
