In Conversation: On Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness & Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship

Catherine Raven is a former national park ranger at Glacier, Mount Rainier, North Cascades, Voyageurs, and Yellowstone national parks. She earned a Ph.D. in biology from Montana State University, holds degrees in zoology and botany from the University of Montana, and is a member of American Mensa and Sigma Xi. Her natural history essays have appeared in American Scientist, Journal of American Mensa, and Montana Magazine. Living in a tiny cottage on an isolated plot of land in Montana, Raven found herself emotionally and physically isolated. Then a mangy-looking fox began to show up every afternoon at 4:15 p.m. She brought out her camping chair, sat as close to him as she dared, and began reading to him from The Little Prince. Her scientific training had taught her not to anthropomorphize animals, yet as she grew to know him, his personality revealed itself and they became friends. Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship (Spiegel & Grau) is a poignant and remarkable tale of friendship, growth, and coping with inevitable loss, and of how that loss can be transformed into meaning. Time called it “an unnerving, contemplative look at solitude and the connections we make with the outside world. Raven … writes with a refreshingly unsentimental hand.”

Kristen Radtke is the author of the graphic nonfiction books Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness and Imagine Wanting Only This. The recipient of a 2019 Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant, she’s also the art director and deputy publisher of The Believer. Radtke’s work has appeared in various publications, including The New York Times, The Atlantic, and The Guardian. Seek You: A Journey Through American Loneliness (Pantheon Books) is her meditation on isolation and longing, both as individuals and society. Shameful to talk about and often misunderstood, loneliness is everywhere, from big cities to small towns. In this exploration, Radtke examines the ways we attempt to feel closer to one another and the distance that remains. She offers a history of loneliness and longing, from the invention of the laugh track to the rise of Instagram, and looks into why we engage with each other and what we risk when we turn away. Here, Radtke shines a light on some of our most vulnerable and sublime moments and asks how we might keep the spaces between us from splitting entirely. The Los Angeles Times called it a “resonant, haunting volume of graphic nonfiction written and drawn in the key of Edward Hopper … It’s the juxtaposition of Radtke’s carefully researched, tightly composed text with the emotive immediacy of her art that amplifies the book’s impact.”

Joan Hilty directs comics and graphic novel publishing at Nickelodeon, and is Editor-in-Chief of the book producer Pageturner. She has been a senior editor at DC Comics/Vertigo and a syndicated cartoonist. She co-chairs the Brooklyn Book Festival graphics committee and teaches at the School of Visual Arts in New York City.