Event: Christian Cooper & Amy Tan in Conversation: Sept. 14, 2025
A Wild Wonder Foundation Celebration at The Foster Museum, Palo Alto, California
Hosted by John Muir Laws and featuring a live owl guest!
Sunday, September 14. 2025, 5:30-9pm*
“Birding shifts your perceptions, adding new layers of meaning and brokering connections: between sounds and seasons, across far-flung places, and between who we are as people and a wild world that both transcends and embraces us. In my life, it has been a window into the wondrous.”― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
“My start in nature journaling and drawing came through workshops with John Muir Laws. I not only learned to draw, I discovered I could live more deeply in the moment, with curiosity, awe, and gratitude. It was restorative in a time of turmoil. I hope you can join me and share the joy.”—Amy Tan, avid nature journaler, bird artist, and bestselling author of The Backyard Bird Chronicles
Join Christian Cooper—avid birder, New York Times bestselling author, and Emmy-award-winning television host—and Amy Tan—bestselling author, and avid birder and nature journaler—for a special live, in-person evening about birding and nature connection, hosted by award-winning author and educator John Muir Laws. BONUS: The evening will also include a live ambassador owl from Native Bird Connections, a nonprofit education org.
The evening will begin with a hosted reception with hearty appetizers and wine and the opportunity to see our live owl guest. At 7:15, we will enjoy a talk by a Christian Cooper about his recent books Better Living Through Birding and The Urban Owls. Then Amy Tan will join Christian for a conversation about connecting with nature through birding and wonder. Christian and Amy Tan are friends who often bird together in Central Park. Books by all three authors will be for sale, and there will be a book signing after the conversation.
Join us as we celebrate the third anniversary of the Wild Wonder Foundation, a nonprofit co-founded by John Muir Laws, which is dedicated to encouraging nature connection and conservation through attention, curiosity, art, science, and community. All funds raised support Wild Wonder Foundation and our numerous free and low-cost resources to help people connect with nature.
“He had spent most of his life in the Central Park Zoo, where there wasn’t much room to fly and there wasn’t much to do. But then Flaco got loose, and he flew and flew and flew! If you’d been stuck in a cage your whole life, wouldn’t you?”—Christian Cooper, The Urban Owls: How Flaco and Friends Made the City Their Home
TICKETS: $65 per person, including the catered reception and talk/conversation. Please consider choosing a ticket with an additional donation. Thank you for your support.
SCHEDULE:
5:30—Doors open
5:30-7:00—Hosted reception, hors d’oeuvres, and wine bar, and viewing of our live owl guest from Native Bird Connections.
7:15-8:30—Christian Cooper in conversation with Amy Tan, hosted by John Muir Laws
8:30-9:00–Book signing with Christian Cooper, Amy Tan, and John Muir Laws
NOTE: Books by all three authors will be for sale at the event, and authors will sign books after the event.
Please see below for additional information about our speakers.
Special thanks to The Foster Museum for sponsoring this celebration and to Heyday Books for their generous support.
OTHER IMPORTANT NOTES:
Unless otherwise noted, seats are general admission.
Tickets are required for this event, and the capacity is very limited.
Ticket sales end September 12, and there will be no tickets sold at the door.
If the event sells out, we will keep a waitlist and add people if spaces become available.
This event will be livestreamed to Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference attendees.
Any conference pass holder who wishes to attend this live event must also purchase a separate ticket to attend.
*If you are unable to join us in person, you can purchase a Live Pass or Video Pass to our Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference, and you will be able to watcha livestream of this event (and enjoy the other speakers throughout our 5-day conference).
We hope you can join us! Please consider choosing a ticket with an additional donation as all funds raised from this event support Wild Wonder Foundation.
A Wild Wonder Foundation Celebration at The Foster Museum, Palo Alto, California
Hosted by John Muir Laws and featuring a live owl guest!
Sunday, September 14. 2025, 5:30-9pm*
“Birding shifts your perceptions, adding new layers of meaning and brokering connections: between sounds and seasons, across far-flung places, and between who we are as people and a wild world that both transcends and embraces us. In my life, it has been a window into the wondrous.”― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
“My start in nature journaling and drawing came through workshops with John Muir Laws. I not only learned to draw, I discovered I could live more deeply in the moment, with curiosity, awe, and gratitude. It was restorative in a time of turmoil. I hope you can join me and share the joy.”—Amy Tan, avid nature journaler, bird artist, and bestselling author of The Backyard Bird Chronicles
Join Christian Cooper—avid birder, New York Times bestselling author, and Emmy-award-winning television host—and Amy Tan—bestselling author, and avid birder and nature journaler—for a special live, in-person evening about birding and nature connection, hosted by award-winning author and educator John Muir Laws. BONUS: The evening will also include a live ambassador owl from Native Bird Connections, a nonprofit education org.
The evening will begin with a hosted reception with hearty appetizers and wine and the opportunity to see our live owl guest. At 7:15, we will enjoy a talk by a Christian Cooper about his recent books Better Living Through Birding and The Urban Owls. Then Amy Tan will join Christian for a conversation about connecting with nature through birding and wonder. Christian and Amy Tan are friends who often bird together in Central Park. Books by all three authors will be for sale, and there will be a book signing after the conversation.
Join us as we celebrate the third anniversary of the Wild Wonder Foundation, a nonprofit co-founded by John Muir Laws, which is dedicated to encouraging nature connection and conservation through attention, curiosity, art, science, and community. All funds raised support Wild Wonder Foundation and our numerous free and low-cost resources to help people connect with nature.
“He had spent most of his life in the Central Park Zoo, where there wasn’t much room to fly and there wasn’t much to do. But then Flaco got loose, and he flew and flew and flew! If you’d been stuck in a cage your whole life, wouldn’t you?”—Christian Cooper, The Urban Owls: How Flaco and Friends Made the City Their Home
TICKETS: $65 per person, including the catered reception and talk/conversation. Please consider choosing a ticket with an additional donation. Thank you for your support.
SCHEDULE:
5:30—Doors open
5:30-7:00—Hosted reception, hors d’oeuvres, and wine bar, and viewing of our live owl guest from Native Bird Connections.
7:15-8:30—Christian Cooper in conversation with Amy Tan, hosted by John Muir Laws
8:30-9:00–Book signing with Christian Cooper, Amy Tan, and John Muir Laws
NOTE: Books by all three authors will be for sale at the event, and authors will sign books after the event.
Please see below for additional information about our speakers.
Special thanks to The Foster Museum for sponsoring this celebration and to Heyday Books for their generous support.
OTHER IMPORTANT NOTES:
Unless otherwise noted, seats are general admission.
Tickets are required for this event, and the capacity is very limited.
Ticket sales end September 12, and there will be no tickets sold at the door.
If the event sells out, we will keep a waitlist and add people if spaces become available.
This event will be livestreamed to Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference attendees.
Any conference pass holder who wishes to attend this live event must also purchase a separate ticket to attend.
*If you are unable to join us in person, you can purchase a Live Pass or Video Pass to our Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference, and you will be able to watcha livestream of this event (and enjoy the other speakers throughout our 5-day conference).
We hope you can join us! Please consider choosing a ticket with an additional donation as all funds raised from this event support Wild Wonder Foundation.
A Wild Wonder Foundation Celebration at The Foster Museum, Palo Alto, California
Hosted by John Muir Laws and featuring a live owl guest!
Sunday, September 14. 2025, 5:30-9pm*
“Birding shifts your perceptions, adding new layers of meaning and brokering connections: between sounds and seasons, across far-flung places, and between who we are as people and a wild world that both transcends and embraces us. In my life, it has been a window into the wondrous.”― Christian Cooper, Better Living Through Birding: Notes from a Black Man in the Natural World
“My start in nature journaling and drawing came through workshops with John Muir Laws. I not only learned to draw, I discovered I could live more deeply in the moment, with curiosity, awe, and gratitude. It was restorative in a time of turmoil. I hope you can join me and share the joy.”—Amy Tan, avid nature journaler, bird artist, and bestselling author of The Backyard Bird Chronicles
Join Christian Cooper—avid birder, New York Times bestselling author, and Emmy-award-winning television host—and Amy Tan—bestselling author, and avid birder and nature journaler—for a special live, in-person evening about birding and nature connection, hosted by award-winning author and educator John Muir Laws. BONUS: The evening will also include a live ambassador owl from Native Bird Connections, a nonprofit education org.
The evening will begin with a hosted reception with hearty appetizers and wine and the opportunity to see our live owl guest. At 7:15, we will enjoy a talk by a Christian Cooper about his recent books Better Living Through Birding and The Urban Owls. Then Amy Tan will join Christian for a conversation about connecting with nature through birding and wonder. Christian and Amy Tan are friends who often bird together in Central Park. Books by all three authors will be for sale, and there will be a book signing after the conversation.
Join us as we celebrate the third anniversary of the Wild Wonder Foundation, a nonprofit co-founded by John Muir Laws, which is dedicated to encouraging nature connection and conservation through attention, curiosity, art, science, and community. All funds raised support Wild Wonder Foundation and our numerous free and low-cost resources to help people connect with nature.
“He had spent most of his life in the Central Park Zoo, where there wasn’t much room to fly and there wasn’t much to do. But then Flaco got loose, and he flew and flew and flew! If you’d been stuck in a cage your whole life, wouldn’t you?”—Christian Cooper, The Urban Owls: How Flaco and Friends Made the City Their Home
TICKETS: $65 per person, including the catered reception and talk/conversation. Please consider choosing a ticket with an additional donation. Thank you for your support.
SCHEDULE:
5:30—Doors open
5:30-7:00—Hosted reception, hors d’oeuvres, and wine bar, and viewing of our live owl guest from Native Bird Connections.
7:15-8:30—Christian Cooper in conversation with Amy Tan, hosted by John Muir Laws
8:30-9:00–Book signing with Christian Cooper, Amy Tan, and John Muir Laws
NOTE: Books by all three authors will be for sale at the event, and authors will sign books after the event.
Please see below for additional information about our speakers.
Special thanks to The Foster Museum for sponsoring this celebration and to Heyday Books for their generous support.
OTHER IMPORTANT NOTES:
Unless otherwise noted, seats are general admission.
Tickets are required for this event, and the capacity is very limited.
Ticket sales end September 12, and there will be no tickets sold at the door.
If the event sells out, we will keep a waitlist and add people if spaces become available.
This event will be livestreamed to Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference attendees.
Any conference pass holder who wishes to attend this live event must also purchase a separate ticket to attend.
*If you are unable to join us in person, you can purchase a Live Pass or Video Pass to our Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference, and you will be able to watcha livestream of this event (and enjoy the other speakers throughout our 5-day conference).
We hope you can join us! Please consider choosing a ticket with an additional donation as all funds raised from this event support Wild Wonder Foundation.
Christian Cooper
Christian Cooper won an Emmy award as the host of the National Geographic TV series Extraordinary Birder and is the author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Better Living Through Birding, through which he spreads “the gospel of birding.” An advocate for equality for queer people, justice for Black people, and birds for all people, Christian serves on the board of NYC Bird Alliance, where works to connect people to nature in an urban environment. A former Marvel Comics editor and writer, he combined his passions in the Black Lives Matter graphic short story "It’s a Bird” from DC Comics and continues to seek synergy at the intersections of storytelling, progressivism, and environmentalism—including with his newly released children’s book The Urban Owls: How Flaco and Friends Made the City Their Home.
Amy Tan
Amy Tan Amy Tan is a bestselling novelist, essayist, and nature journaler. Her latest book is the New York Times bestseller The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf, 2024), with a forward written by David Sibley. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2023 she received the National Humanities Medal. She has been a member of the Nature Journal Club on Facebook since 2016 and also has taken workshops with author, artist, and educator John Muir Laws, which led to her passion for nature journaling. She wrote the introduction to How to Teach Nature Journaling by John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren. She is the subject of the documentary, “Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir,” part of which was filmed at the first-ever Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference at Asilomar in Monterey in 2019, where Amy sketched with fellow nature journalers Fiona Gillogly and John Muir Laws. As part of her informal nature studies, Amy has served as a go-fer in field research with biologists, including one expedition that documented the existence of a single ant colony on Easter Island, and another study on the social system of a community of female rattlesnakes in Colorado that gather to protect their young. She is an instructor with Masterclass, in which she discusses in part how observing nature is similar to developing characters. Her passion for birds led her to joining the board of American Bird Conservancy, which is dedicated to conserving wild birds and their habitats throughout the Americas. Amy recently appeared in a New York Times online event with Christian Cooper on “The Joy of Birding,” and in 2022, she was the host of “Selected Shorts: Bird Stories,” held at Symphony Space in New York City and also live streamed. She is grateful to the Nature Journal Club and Wild Wonder Foundation for inspiration, resources, and encouragement. https://amytan.net/
John Muir Laws
John Muir Laws (a.k.a. Jack) is a principal leader and innovator of the worldwide nature journaling movement and the founder of the Wild Wonder Foundation. As a scientist, educator, artist, and author, Jack helps people forge a deeper and more personal connection with nature through keeping illustrated nature journals and understanding science. Jack has kept nature journals since he was a child. As a dyslexic, Jack struggled in school. He found his place and delight in learning through spending time in nature and keeping notebooks of his observations, discoveries, and adventures. Trained as a wildlife biologist and scientific illustrator, he now observes the world with rigorous attention and awe. He looks for mysteries, plays with ideas, and seeks connection in all he sees. He has found that attention, observation, curiosity, and creative thinking are not gifts, but instead are skills that grow with training and deliberate practice. Jack loves to share ways to make these skills a part of everyday life. He is the author and illustrator of several books including The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling (also available in Spanish), The Laws Sketchbook, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, Sierra Birds: a Hiker’s Guide, Sierra Wildflowers: A Hiker’s Guide, and The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada. He is co-author with Emilie Lygren of How to Teach Nature Journaling. JohnMuirLaws.com
