This event takes place on Crowdcast, Charis' virtual event platform. This event is free, but registration is required. Register here.

Charis welcomes Lorraine Boissoneault in conversation with Micaela Blei for a celebration of Body Weather: Notes on Chronic Illness in the Anthropocene.

Science writer Lorraine Boissoneault has been in pain for most of her adult life. Unable to control or make sense of her chronic illness diagnoses, she began describing the ebb and flow of her symptoms as “body weather.” At first an imaginative approach to coping with flare-ups, the phrase has become a waypoint in Lorraine’s explorations of the intimate relationship between our fragile bodies and the world around us.

Visceral and poetic, these braided essays traverse science, history, and memoir to explore the interconnected relationships between the human body and Earth’s meteorology—two chaotic systems that inform every cell of our beings. Boissoneault surveys her own “body weather,” relating her dysregulated thyroid to global temperature fluctuations; her arrhythmic heart to chaotic thunderstorms; her inflamed joints to wildfires beyond control.

Body Weather is a lyrical exploration that reimagines the cloudy stages of grief and challenges us to reexamine universal questions lodged deep within: how do we find comfort and meaning in a fevered world?

Lorraine Boissoneault is a writer and a journalist covering science, history, travel, and current events. Author of The Last Voyageurs, Boissoneault has previously been a staff writer for Smithsonian Magazine and editor for The Weather Channel. Her work has appeared in The New Yorker, National Geographic, The Atlantic, Playboy Magazine, Catapult, Audubon, Slate, and many other outlets.

Micaela Blei is a two-time NYC Moth GrandSLAM champion and former, founding Director of Education at The Moth, where she designed the storytelling curriculum now used by thousands worldwide. Micaela's own stories have been featured on This American Life, The Moth Radio Hour, and a bunch of other places. Her 2024 Audible Original memoir "You Will Not Recognize Your Life" was a category bestseller, and her full-length memoir is forthcoming from HarperOne in 2027. She specializes in helping people figure out that they're actually very, very interesting.

The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate on Crowdcast or via our website: www.chariscircle.org/donate.

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Body Weather: Notes on Chronic Illness in the Anthropocene -- Lorraine Boissoneault in conversation with Micaela Blei