ASTORIA — KALA welcomes nature writer Robert Michael Pyle at 7:30 p.m. Friday, Jan. 23. Pyle will read from his latest release, “Evolution of the Genus Iris.” After 18 books of prose, hundreds of essays, distinguished keynote lectures, articles and scientific papers, he has collected his unpublished poetry in this volume.

A Grays River, Washington-based author, Pyle is widely known for his publications, including “Where Bigfoot Walks,” “Mariposa Road,” “The Tangled Bank” (a collection of his essays for Orion Magazine), and for co-editing the grand tome “Nabokov’s Butterflies,” letters and drawings of author and fellow lepidopterist Vladimir Nabokov.

Pyle is notably the founder of the international Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. A Guggenheim Fellow, he has won the John Burroughs Medal, three Governor’s Writer’s Awards, a Pacific Northwest Booksellers’ Award, the Harry Nehls Award for Nature Writing, and the National Outdoor Book Award for natural history literature.

For his work with butterfly ecology and conservation, he received the John Adams Comstock Award and a Distinguished Service Award from the Society for Conservation Biology. He was recently appointed Honorary Fellow of the Royal Entomological Society and Senior Fellow of the Spring Creek Project at Oregon State University.

For 35 years he has dwelt beside, observed and drawn inspiration from Grays River in the Willapa Hills of southwest Washington.

Doors open at 7 p.m. Following the reading, the author will sign books, and KALA serves complimentary treats with Finnish mustard. Admission is $8. Cocktails will be available. KALA is located at 1017 Marine Drive in Astoria. For more information, call 503-338-4878.