The University of Arizona Press
Date: Friday, November 6, 2026
Time: 5 p.m., MST
Place: Antigone Books, 411 N 4th Ave, Tucson, AZ
Gary Paul Nabhan will celebrate the launch of his new book, illustrated by , Sonoran Desert Bestiary: A More-Than-Natural History at Antigone Books in Tucson. This event is free and open to the public. Nabhan is an Arab American writer, desert food artisan, and garden designer. He is the founder of the Sacred Plant Recovery Initiative and the author of more than thirty books, including Gathering the Desert and The Desert Smells Like Rain. Long’s visual art, made under the pen name NearsightGraphite, has been published through Frontiers in Microbiology, Manifest Press, the Confluencenter for Creative Inquiry, and Edible Baja Arizona magazine, among others.
About the book:
The Sonoran Desert has many marvelous and well-known creatures such as the javelina and the coyote, often found on postcards and lawn ornaments. But what about the lesser-known creatures—the ones that are underfoot yet unseen, that lurk only in the shadows and in our imaginations? In this collection of essays, prose poems, and illustrations, naturalist Gary Paul Nabhan and artist Robert J. Long team up to celebrate these unsung beings of the Sonoran Desert.
Sonoran Desert Bestiary: A More-than-Natural History includes creatures whose existence lies largely in traditional story and belief, as well as creatures whose life cycles are so cryptic they seem mythic, such as the walking catfish and the carbunco. Positioned at the dynamic intersection of folklore and natural history, the book reflects on the reasons why human imaginations over the ages have reached into this realm of seldom seen but often intuited animals.
This more-than-natural history is for anyone who finds joy in the marvels of the natural world.
