Teaching a Stone to Talk

Expeditions and Encounters

Annie Dillard

At a certain point, you say to the woods, to the sea, to the mountains, the world, Now I am ready. Now I will stop and be wholly attentive. You empty yourself and wait, listening
Teaching a Stone to Talk by Annie Dillard (Paperback ISBN 9781782118855) book cover

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A dazzling celebration of the natural world and our place in it from the Pulitzer Prize-winning nature writer.

In Teaching a Stone to Talk, Annie Dillard fixes her entrancing gaze and powerful sense of wonder on the natural world. Whether watching a sublime lunar eclipse or locking eyes with a wild weasel, Dillard captures the grand and miniature miracles of our universe.

Annie Dillard is one of the most respected and influential figures in contemporary non-fiction and winner of the Pulitzer Prize. With Teaching a Stone to Talk, she illuminates the world around us with a new and glowing light.


“Dillard opens our eyes to the world and to new ways of articulating what we see”
Geoff Dyer

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“Annie Dillard is one of those people who seem to be more fully alive than most of us, more nearly wide-awake than human beings generally get to be”
new York Times

“Among the greatest nature writers who have ever lived … Keen, urgent and impassioned, her subject is life itself, in all its teeming and marvellous forms”
Olivia Laing

“It was Annie Dillard who got me, before it was too late, to pay attention to where I was before I lost it”
Richard Holloway

“Annie Dillard’s words are the outpouring of a brilliant mind tempered by a pleading heart. Her distinctive voice and incandescent imagery lifts us to heights few writers can ever hope to aspire to”
John Lister-kaye


Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard was born in 1945 in Pennsylvania. She is a much-celebrated poet, novelist and essayist and author of thirteen books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters and has received fellowship grants from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. She was awarded the 2014 National Humanities Medal for her work deepening the understanding of the human experience. www.anniedillard.com



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