The Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers and the Lopez Library will present a literary non-fiction event, Friday, June 2, at 7 p.m. at the Lopez Island Library.

The evening brings to the Northwest two celebrated desert writers who have been recognized for excellence by the Ellen Meloy Fund for Desert Writers. Reading at the event will be Kate Harris, a writer and adventurer who lives off-grid in Atlin, British Columbia.

Named one of Canada’s top modern-day explorers, and past winner of the Ellen Meloy Desert Writer’s Award, her travels edging the limits of nations, endurance, and sanity have taken her to all seven continents. Her first book, “Lands of Lost Borders,” is forthcoming with Knopf Canada.

Also reading at the event is Kendra Atleework, the 2016 recipient of the Ellen Meloy Desert Writer’s Award. Her writing appears in Best American Essays 2015 and elsewhere. She’s at work on a nonfiction book about growing up amid drought and wildfire in the eastern Sierra Nevada Mountains.

The Ellen Meloy Fund supports writers whose work reflects the spirit and passion for the desert embodied in Meloy’s writing and in her commitment to a “deep map of place.” Before her untimely death in 2004, Meloy published four books, numerous articles, and radio commentaries. Her last book, Eating Stone, won the John Burroughs Association Medal for 2007. An earlier work, “The Anthropology of Turquoise,” was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize.

More information about Ellen Meloy, the Fund for Desert Writers and the annual award can be found at http://www.ellenmeloyfund.org. This very special reading is in memory of the friendship and love between naturalist/writer Ellen Meloy, and longtime Lopez resident Ivaly Hoedemaker. The two met in Utah (husbands Mark Meloy and Steve Rubey tagged along) and shared many adventures on the Colorado Plateau and in the San Juan Islands. For more info. contact Jen Krajack at the Lopez Library at 468-2265.