WAKE-UP CALL
A sobering UN report on extinction blames human greed and carelessness. Will living in Pandemia scare us straight?
Lydia Millet is a novelist and short-story writer known for her dark humor, idiosyncratic characters and language, and strong interest in the relationship between humans and other animals. Born in Boston, she grew up in Toronto and now lives outside Tucson, Arizona with her two children, where she writes and works in wildlife conservation. Millet won the PEN-USA award for fiction for her early novel My Happy Life (2002); in 2010, her story collection Love in Infant Monkeys was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. In 2008, 2011, and 2012 she published three novels in a critically acclaimed series about extinction and personal loss: How the Dead Dream, Ghost Lights, and Magnificence. In 2014 she published her first book for young-adult readers, Pills and Starships; this was followed by Mermaids in Paradise, a satire about a couple honeymooning in the Caribbean. Sweet Lamb of Heaven, a psychological thriller about a woman in hiding from her estranged husband, was published in May 2016.