Dr. Paul Koudounaris spent over a decade traveling the world to study pet cemeteries, animal memorials, and various traditions for saying final goodbyes to cherished pets. In his research he discovered far more than the burials of cats and dogs. What he discovered were graves for everything from flies to elephants, but no matter how disparate the species and how far removed geographically, all had one thing in common: each of them were beloved to a human companion. His talk on the topic will be accompanied by an evocative selection of photos from his new book on the topic. Ranging from Victorian English cat graves to caskets for horned toads in the Wild West to glass dog house tombs in Bolivia, this promises to be a talk that is sometimes weird, often fascinating, and entirely touching.

Dr. Paul Koudounaris is a PhD in Art History living in Las Vegas. An author and photographer, his previous books include three on death (Empire of Death, Heavenly Bodies, and Memento Mori) and one on feline history (A Cat’s Tale, a Barnes and Noble book of the year in 2020). His new book combines his interest in funeral and animal history, and is the product of an exhaustive, ten year study of pet cemeteries and animal burial sites around the world.

Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event. 

*$25 fee is per person, per seat!* 

THERE ARE NO REFUNDS OR EXCHANGES OF ANY KIND.