Wednesday, March 18th, Readers’ Books hosts Bill McNamara as he recites and discusses the poetry from his latest collection, Before Tomorrow. There will be a 5:30 reception followed by the reading at 6:00 p.m. Before Tomorrow is a unique collection of poems that follows a solitary man as he guides the reader through an exploration of nature and its degradation, with an emphasis on the various endangered flora and fauna species around the world.
In company with horticulturists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Howick Arboretum, and others, William McNamara has botanized extensively in the wilds of Asia. For more than thirty years, he ventured into the mountains of China, Tibet, Japan, India, Nepal, Vietnam, Bhutan, and Myanmar in search of plants.
In 1987, McNamara began working with Quarry Hill Botanical Garden in Glen Ellen, California. He was promoted to Director in 1994, made Executive Director in 2007, and retired in 2019. McNamara was made a Field Associate of the Department of Botany, California Academy of Sciences, San Francisco and an Honorary Researcher of the Scientific Information Center of Resources and Environment of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2000. He has received numerous awards, including the Garden Club of America’s Eloise Payne Luquer Medal, the Scott Medal and Award from the Scott Arboretum, the Award of Excellence from the National Garden Clubs, the Veitch Memorial Medal from the Royal Horticultural Society, and the Liberty Hyde Bailey Award from the American Horticultural Society…