An Evening with Ethan Tapper

Discover the profound connection between ecology and our vital roles as nature's stewards through the eye-opening experiences. Ethan Tapper is a forester, ecologist, digital storyteller, and the bestselling author of How to Love a Forest: The Bittersweet Work of Tending a Changing World. For more than a decade, Ethan has been recognized as a thought-leader in the world of ecosystem stewardship, winning numerous regional and national awards for his work. More recently, he has been recognized as a writer – since its publication in 2024, How to Love a Forest has been named the winner of the 2025 New England Book Award for nonfiction, and received international acclaim. Ethan’s message of relationship, responsibility, and hope reaches millions of people each year through his writing, social media channels with hundreds of thousands of followers, and the hundreds of walks, talks, and keynotes that he delivers across North America each year. Ethan works, writes, hunts, birds, and runs a small consulting forestry business from his home at Bear Island – his 175-acre working forest, homestead, orchard, and sugarbush in Vermont – and plays in his punk band, The Bubs. The Forest Year is a meditative and lyrical ode to the land, weaving complex scientific and ecological concepts with beautiful narrative prose, making nuanced ideas easy to understand and deeply resonant. Both place-based and practice-driven, Tapper writes not as an armchair philosopher or an academic, but as a working forester and ecologist stewarding real forests in real time, blending emotional insight with ecological rigor. This event is being hosted by the Newtown Forest Association and The Little Fox Book Shop. The NFA, founded in 1924, is Newtown's largest private land owner and Connecticut's oldest land trust with 2,000 acres of open space under its stewardship. The Little Fox is a brand new independant book shop in neighboring Southbury who will have copies of Ethan's books available for sale at this event.