Merrill Sapp
Merrill Sapp is a cognitive psychologist, physician assistant, professor, and student of nature. She has traveled the world to learn about and work in the service of elephants. As a cognitive psychologist, she explores elephants' experience of the world to show how they respond to their surroundings and how their surroundings respond back. Her writing has appeared in About Place Journal, Ecological Citizen, Earth Island Journal, and Mongabay News. She teaches at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
Publications
Sapp, M. (2023)
Same, Same but Different
About Place Journal, 7 (4)
Sapp, M. (2023)
The price of wildlife: Trophy hunting and conservation in Africa
The Ecological Citizen, 6 (1): epub-080
Sapp, M. (2022, March 16)
Can we plan for a future without trophy hunting?
Mongabay News
Sapp, M. (2022, January 12)
Unique traits shouldn’t be the key reason for protecting a species
Earth Island Journal
Sapp, M. (2021, June 22)
Do we love elephants enough to let them live free?
Mongabay News
Events
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Knowing Wonder: A Book Release Party
6:30 PM
January 16, 2025Skylark Bookshop
22 S 9th St, Columbia, MissouriJoin us in celebrating the publication of Knowing Wonder: An Elephant Story.
“In her stunning evocation of the lives of a small herd of elephants as they roam across the African continent, Merrill Sapp has created a small, haunting miracle. This beautiful portrait of these majestic, deeply intelligent and empathetic creatures is both fascinating and enraging. It is the elephants’ fate to be so deeply attuned to their environment and yet ultimately helpless when confronted with the rapacious greed and stupidity of men. Sapp tells us that elephants never forget. Anyone who reads this book won’t forget it, either.”
—Alex George, author of The Paris Hours and owner of Skylark Bookshop
Experience the rhythm of life within an elephant family.
A nonfictional story or scientific tale, Knowing Wonder: An Elephant Story invites you to explore the world of elephants within the context of real behavior and events connected with scientific insight into their inner lives. Know the intimacy of an elephant family in birth and death, joy and sorrow as Lua navigates the seasons of her life on our ever-changing earth.
Sample Pages
“This touching and insightful book introduces us to elephants as they are to themselves, and to us when we get to know them: fully elephant persons, with their own particular glories, tragedies and concerns in which we can recognize our own. The author does this with a combination of head and heart, of science and love, which brings out the best of each. Indeed, I know of no other way to save either the elephants or ourselves. Reading Knowing Wonder is an urgent privilege.”
—Patrick Curry, author of Ecological Ethics and Editor-in-Chief of The Ecological Citizen
ABOUT THE ILLUSTRATOR
Gareth Hook grew up on a remote farm in Zimbabwe and learned at an early age the unique, sometimes hostile ways of the untamed world. His education, including a fine arts degree from Rhodes University, South Africa, led to his passion for painting, drawing, and capturing the essence of the African animal. Gareth’s close affinity with the natural world informs his subject matter, and he has made generous donations of his artwork to support conservation and anti-poaching efforts in Zimbabwe.
“What elevates Knowing Wonder from a rich and informed natural history to an engrossing, heart-rending story is the imaginative introduction of Lua and Moyo, African elephants, and their kin, who we follow through a world wracked and ravaged by human appetites and the vagaries of climate change... Intrigued and surprised by how these creatures make their way in an increasingly unpredictable world, I have come to appreciate that it is only through the hard truths of the non- human world that we can truly come to understand ourselves.”
—James Raffan, explorer and author of Ice Walker (2020)