Thylacine – Lydia Millet

Emergence Magazine Podcast

How can we learn to be with the grief that arises within as we witness the destruction being wrought upon the Earth? When we are broken open by the pain of loss, how can we hold and work with the seeds of despair, but also love, that flood into that space? This week, we revisit “Thylacine,” a short story by American novelist and Pulitzer Prize finalist Lydia Millet that imagines the twilight of the last remaining Tasmanian tiger, a creature caught in the crosshairs of Australia’s violent colonization. As a man mourns the death of his mother, he seeks the company of the tiger housed in a failing zoo. Turning to face the loss that begins to swell through the zoo like a plague, he summons the courage to care for what remains amid an overwhelming sorrow for what will inevitably disappear.

Read the story

Find “Thylacine” and other Short Stories of Apocalypse, in our inaugural print fiction collection.

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