Wonder, Joy & the Writing Life with Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil

Name: Wonder, Joy & the Writing Life with Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Start: 2026-02-23T11:00:00-05:00
End: 2026-02-23T12:30:00-05:00
Location: Bookstore1Sarasota

Bookstore1Sarasota

Highlights

Mon, 23 Feb, 2026 at 11:00 am

1.5 hours

Bookstore1Sarasota

Starting at USD 21

Date & Location

Mon, 23 Feb, 2026 at 11:00 am to 12:30 pm (GMT-05:00)

Bookstore1Sarasota

117 S. Pineapple Ave., Sarasota, United States

About the event

Wonder, Joy & the Writing Life with Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil

An intimate talk between award-winning writers on radical possibilities of tenderness in a troubled world. Includes audience Q&A + signing.

About this Event

Join us in the loft of Bookstore1Sarasota for an intimate conversation with New York Times bestselling authors Aimee Nezhukumatathil and Ross Gay on how joy, wonder, and small astonishments shape their prose. Drawing from their essay collections, the two writers explore attention as a form of care, how daily noticing becomes a spiritual and creative practice, and the radical possibilities of tenderness in a troubled world.
We'll learn how those moments become literature—how noticing becomes shaping, how awe becomes a sentence, and how tenderness becomes structure. Aimee and Ross will discuss the creative practices behind their prose and how attention can become a way of writing as well as a way of being. Writers and readers alike will have an opportunity to ask questions.
Admission to this event requires advance registration through this ticketing page. To attend, simply choose one of the following book-purchase options:

WORLD OF WONDERS by Aimee Nezhukumatathil + THE BOOK OF (MORE) DELIGHTS by Ross Gay
BITE BY BITE by Aimee Nezhukumatathil + THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS by Ross Gay
WORLD OF WONDERS by Aimee Nezhukumatathil (single book)
THE BOOK OF (MORE) DELIGHTS (single book)

Each ticket includes your selected book(s) and event admission. Your ticket is simply the cost of the book(s) you choose - no extra admission fee required.
A book signing will follow the conversation.
ABOUT AIMEE NEZUKUMATATHIL
Aimee Nezukumatathil is the New York Times best-selling author of the forthcoming poetry book, NIGHT OWL (Mar. 2026), and two illustrated collections of essays, BITE BY BITE and WORLD OF WONDERS: IN PRAISE OF FIREFLIES, WHALE SHARKS, & OTHER ASTONISHMENTS, which was chosen as Barnes and Noble's Book of the Year and named a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She also wrote four previous award-winning poetry collections: OCEANIC, LUCKY FISH, AT THE DRIVE-IN VOLCANO, and MIRACLE FRUIT. With the poet Ross Gay, she co-authored the chapbook LACE & PYRITE, a collaboration on epistolary garden poems. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and The Paris Review.
Honors include a poetry fellowship from US Artist Fellows, the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. For a decade, she served as the poetry editor for Orion and Sierra magazines. A professor of English and Creative Writing for over twenty-five years, she also serves as a firefly guide for Mississippi State Parks. Photo credit: Tenola Plaxico
https://aimeenez.net
ABOUT ROSS GAY
Ross Gay is the author of four books of poetry: AGAINST WHICH; BRINGING THE SHOVEL DOWN; BE HOLDING, winner of the PEN American Literary Jean Stein Award; and CATALOG OF UNABASHED GRATITUDE, winner of the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award and the 2016 Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award. In addition to his poetry, Ross has released three collections of essays: THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS was released in 2019 and was a New York Times bestseller; INCITING JOY was released in 2022, and his newest collection, THE BOOK OF (MORE) DELIGHTS, was released in September of 2023. Photo credit: Natasha Komoda
https://www.rossgay.net

ABOUT THE BOOKS

WORLD OF WONDERS BY AIMEE NEZUKUMATATHIL
A New York Times Bestseller ◆ Barnes & Noble Book of the Year ◆ An NPR Best Book of the Year ◆ A Kirkus Prize Finalist for Nonfiction ◆ A Southern Book Prize Finalist ◆ A Ohioana Book Award Winner ◆ An Esquire Best Book of the Year ◆ A BuzzFeed Best Book of the Year ◆ A Kirkus Best Nonfiction Book of the Year ◆ A Literary Hub Favorite Book of the Year ◆ A New York Public Library Best Book of the Year
Beloved author Aimee Nezhukumatathil’s celebrated work of nonfiction, now including additional essays and illustrations in paperback.
As a child, Nezhukumatathil called many places home: the grounds of a Kansas mental institution, where her Filipina mother was a doctor; the open skies and tall mountains of Arizona, where she hiked with her Indian father; and the chillier climes of western New York and Ohio. But no matter where she was transplanted—no matter how awkward the fit or forbidding the landscape—she was able to turn to our world’s fierce and funny creatures for guidance.
“What the peacock can do,” she tells us, “is remind you of a home you will run away from and run back to all your life.” The axolotl teaches us to smile, even in the face of unkindness; the touch-me-not plant shows us how to shake off unwanted advances; the narwhal demonstrates how to survive in hostile environments. Even in the strange and the unlovely, Nezhukumatathil finds beauty and kinship. For it is this way with wonder: it requires that we are curious enough to look past the distractions to fully appreciate the world’s gifts.
Warm, lyrical, and gorgeously illustrated by Fumi Nakamura, WORLD OF WONDERS is a book of sustenance and joy.

BITE BY BITE BY AIMEE NEZUKUMATATHIL
From the New York Times bestselling author of World of Wonders, a lyrical book of short essays about food, offering a banquet of tastes, smells, memories, associations, and marvelous curiosities from nature
In BITE BY BITE, poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil explores the way food and drink evoke our associations and remembrances—a subtext or layering, a flavor tinged with joy, shame, exuberance, grief, desire, or nostalgia.
Nezhukumatathil restores our astonishment and wonder about food through her encounters with a range of foods and food traditions. From shave ice to lumpia, mangoes to pecans, rambutan to vanilla, she investigates how food marks our experiences and identities and explores the boundaries between heritage and memory.
BITE BY BITE offers a rich and textured kaleidoscope of vignettes and visions into the world of food and nature, drawn together by intimate and humorous personal reflections, with Fumi Nakamura’s gorgeous imagery and illustration.

THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS BY ROSS GAY
A New York Times Bestseller ◆ Named one of the Best Books of 2019 by the Washington Independent Review of Books and Shelf Awareness ◆ Named a Best Reviewed Book of 2019 by Lit Hub ◆ Named one of the Five Books Every High Schooler Should Read by the School Library Journal ◆ Named one of the Eight Books We Can't Stop Thinking About by Vanity Fair
The New York Times bestselling book of essays celebrating ordinary delights in the world around us by one of America's most original and observant writers, award-winning poet Ross Gay. The winner of the NBCC Award for Poetry offers up a spirited collection of short lyrical essays, written daily over a tumultuous year, reminding us of the purpose and pleasure of praising, extolling, and celebrating ordinary wonders.
In THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS, Ross Gay offers up a genre-defying volume of lyric essays written over one tumultuous year. The first nonfiction book from award-winning poet Ross Gay is a record of the small joys we often overlook in our busy lives. Among Gay’s funny, poetic, philosophical delights: a friend’s unabashed use of air quotes, cradling a tomato seedling aboard an airplane, the silent nod of acknowledgment between the only two black people in a room. But Gay never dismisses the complexities, even the terrors, of living in America as a black man or the ecological and psychic violence of our consumer culture or the loss of those he loves. More than anything else, though, Gay celebrates the beauty of the natural world–his garden, the flowers peeking out of the sidewalk, the hypnotic movements of a praying mantis. THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS is about our shared bonds, and the rewards that come from a life closely observed. These remarkable pieces serve as a powerful and necessary reminder that we can, and should, stake out a space in our lives for delight.

THE BOOK OF (MORE) DELIGHTS BY ROSS GAY
From the bestselling author of THE BOOK OF DELIGHTS and award-winning poet, a book of lyrical mini-essays celebrating the everyday that will inspire readers to rediscover the joys in the world around us.

In Ross Gay’s new collection of small, daily wonders, again written over the course of a year, one of America’s most original voices continues his ongoing investigation of delight.
For Gay, what delights us is what connects us, what gives us meaning, from the joy of hearing a nostalgic song blasting from a passing car to the pleasure of refusing the “nefarious” scannable QR code menus, from the tiny dog he fell hard for to his mother baking a dozen kinds of cookies for her grandchildren. As always, Gay revels in the natural world—sweet potatoes being harvested, a hummingbird carousing in the beebalm, a sunflower growing out of a wall around the cemetery, the shared bounty from a neighbor’s fig tree—and the trillion mysterious ways this glorious earth delights us.
THE BOOK OF (MORE) DELIGHTS is a volume to savor and share.
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Ticket Info

Tickets for Wonder, Joy & the Writing Life with Ross Gay & Aimee Nezhukumatathil can be booked here.

Ticket type	Ticket price
"World of Wonders" + "The Book of (More) Delights"	43 USD
"Bite by Bite" + "The Book of Delights"	37 USD
"World of Wonders" (Single Book)	21 USD
"The Book of (More) Delights" (Single Book)	21 USD