Pittston author shares love of dinosaurs in ‘Dig: A Personal Prehistoric Journey’ virtual event on Jan. 21
From a press release:
A love for dinosaurs doesn’t have to end after childhood – it can turn into a lifelong adventure.
Pittston author Sam Chiarelli, who has dug for fossils in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Colorado, wrote a memoir, “Dig: A Personal Prehistoric Journey,” that serves as an intersection of his love of dinosaurs and his personal story, exploring why people are so fascinated with dinosaurs and why some “dinophiles” never outgrow their Mesozoic obsession.
The North Pocono Public Library will host a free virtual discussion about the book on Thursday, Jan. 21 at 6 p.m. The first 10 registrants will receive a free signed copy of “Dig” before the program, which will be held online via Zoom. Email etarr@albright.org to register and receive a link to join.
Published by Books By Hippocampus, a print division of Hippocampus Magazine in Lancaster, “Dig” follows Chiarelli on a cross-country Amtrak trip with a final destination of a fossil dig in Colorado. Buried within these pages are encounters in museums big and small, prep labs, robotic dinosaur parks and prehistoric-themed hotels, and interviews with many of his childhood heroes – paleontologists, artists, and others who’ve dedicated their lives to revealing the distant past.
Part science and nature adventure and part memoir, this book is all dinosaur.
“A prehistoric journey from the heart, Sam Chiarelli’s travelogue will awaken your inner child and make you fall in love with dinosaurs all over again,” said Steve Brusatte, a paleontologist at the University of Edinburgh and the New York Times bestselling author of “The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of Their Lost World.”
Sam Chiarelli has an MFA in creative writing from Wilkes University and blogs at This Day in Dinosaurs. A lifelong “dinophile,” his essays have appeared in Assay: A Journal of Nonfiction Studies and Longridge Review.
The launch party for “Dig” was held in 2018 at Everhart Museum in Scranton, where he saw his first dinosaur at the age of 4.
Funding for the North Pocono Public Library (1315 Church St., Moscow) program has been provided by the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities as part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020.
