Local Color Gallery will host a reading by Alice Hotopp, author of Atlas of Kinship: Stories of Connection between Seabirds, People & Place, and Leslie Moore, poet/illustrator of What Rough Beasts and Grackledom, on Saturday, July 25, from 3 - 4 p.m. They’ll read about seabirds, particularly puffins; artists will showcase bird art throughout the gallery. 

Hotopp’s collection of short essays tells the story of Atlantic Puffins and other seabirds who breed on desolate rocks along the Maine coast, and the heroic efforts of generations of biologists whose dedication has kept their nesting colonies safe and flourishing ever since the young biologist Steve Kress brought the first puffins back to Eastern Egg Rock in 1969. Interwoven with this story are personal stories of individuals who spend years of their lives on inhospitable rocks in the middle of the sea to maintain and protect breeding colonies of seabirds.

"Filled with insight, information and inspiration, Atlas of Kinship is a celebration of human effort and resolve, and an affirmation of hope in the face of ecological fear," said a Local Color news release.

Alice Hotopp is an ecologist. She holds a PhD from the University of Maine in Ecology and Environmental Sciences. Atlas of Kinship is her first book. She will read essays from her book and show illustrations by Coco Faber, a field biologist, who spends her summers working with seabirds on Seal Island, a rock in the middle of the sea full of winged life.

Leslie Moore is an artist/owner of Local Color Gallery. Her two books of animal poetry and relief prints, What Rough Beasts and Grackledom, feature many poems about birds, particularly seabirds. She will read poems and show her linocut and woodblock prints. 

All three books are published by Littoral Books of Portland, Maine.

Local Color Gallery is located at 135 High Street in Belfast. Hours are Tuesday through Saturday, 11 to 5 and Sunday 11 to 4. For more information see localcolorgallerymaine.org or call 207-218-1249.