They wrote about the Twilight mystique, and they are scheduled to talk about it next week in a UC Davis Bookstore event. The seven participants — including six faculty members — contributed to the recently published The Twilight Mystique: Critical Essays on the Novels and Films.

Next month, the bookstore is bringing in Pulitzer Prize winner Gary Snyder, professor emeritus of English, for a program about a new book titled The Nature of This Place. He wrote several pieces in the book, as well as the foreword.

Both events are free and open to the public, and each will include a question-and-answer session and book signing.

The Twilight Mystique

The Twilight Mystique program is scheduled from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 27, at Bistro 33, 226 F St., Davis.

Scheduled to attend are these contributors: Amy Clarke, Pamela Demory and James McElroy, lecturers, University Writing Program; Marijane Osborn, professor emeritus of English; Kristian Jensen, a graduate student, and associate instructor in English, Native American studies and the University Writing Program; Keri Wolf, a lecturer in English; and Emma Catherine McElroy, 14-year-old Twilight fan, the daughter of James McElroy and his co-author for one of the book's essays, "Eco-Gothics for the Twenty-First Century."

The book comprises 11 essays that explore Stephenie Meyer's popular Twilight series in the contexts of literature, religion, fairy tales, film and the Gothic.

Several of the essays examine Meyer’s emphasis on abstinence, considering how, why, and if her Mormon faith has influenced the series’ worldview.

Other essays look at fan involvement in the Twilight world, focusing on how the series’ avid following has led to an economic transformation in Forks, Wash., the real town where the fictional series is set.

The book’s other topics include Meyer’s use of Quileute shape-shifting legends, Twilight’s literary heritage and its frequent references to classic works of literature, and the series’ controversial depictions of femininity.

The Nature of This Place

Snyder, who received the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1975 for his book Turtle Island, is due on campus on Friday, Feb. 11. Organizers of this bookstore event said Snyder and David Lukas, nature journalist and educator, will read and talk about their contributions to The Nature of This Place: Investigations and Adventures in the Yuba Watershed.

The program is scheduled from noon to 1 p.m. in the King Lounge, Memorial Union.

The roots of the book go back 20 years, when neighbors on the San Juan Ridge began an experiment to co-manage U.S. forest lands interwoven throughout the Sierra foothills community

The neighbors founded the Yuba Watershed Institute, a nonprofit organization dedicated to forest stewardship, and began publishing Tree Rings, a spirited journal of personal observations, musings and art inspired by the place the contributors called home: the Yuba River watershed.

This book contains a mix of essays, poems, drawings and photographs from the pages of Tree Rings.

In describing The Nature of This Place, one of the contributors said: “Here is the inspiring record of a rural community working to understand, restore, learn from — and live from —the natural world. It is thoughtful, funny and caring, portrayed with consummate love by a talented tribe of naturalists, natives, foresters, loggers, biologists, philosophers, craftspeople, retirees, artists, writers, farmers, historians and poets.”