In this debut essay collection, Laura Marris reframes environmental degradation by setting aside the conventional, catastrophic framework of the Anthropocene in favor of that of the Eremocene, the age of loneliness, marked by the dramatic thinning of wildlife populations and by isolation between and among species. She asks: How do we add to archives of ecological memory? How can we notice and document what’s missing in the landscapes closest to us? Vivid, keenly observed, and driven by a lively and lyrical voice, The Age of Loneliness is a moving examination of the dangers of loneliness, the surprising histories of ecological loss, and the ways that community science—which relies on the embodied evidence of “ground truth”—can help us recognize, and maybe even recover, what we’ve learned to live without.
Laura Marris is a writer and translator whose work has been published in notable outlets like The Believer, The New York Times, and The Paris Review Daily. Her first solo-authored book, The Age of Loneliness, was released in August 2024 by Graywolf. Marris has translated several works, including Albert Camus’s The Plague, and co-authored a critical book with Alice Kaplan, States of Plague: Reading Albert Camus in a Pandemic. Her translations have earned recognition, with shortlisted books for prestigious prizes like the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. She is a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University at Buffalo and a Teaching Artist at Just Buffalo Literary Center.
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