JoeAnn Hart

JoeAnn Hart writes about the pervasive and widespread effects of the climate crisis on the natural world and the human psyche. Her most recent book, Arroyo Circle, a story of reclamation in a time of loss, was released by Green Writers Press in 2024. Her other books include the prize-winning environmental and animal fiction collection Highwire Act & Other Tales of Survival, the crime memoir Stamford ’76: A True Story of Murder, Corruption, Race, and Feminism in the 1970s, as well as Float, a dark comedy about plastics in the ocean published by Ashland Creek Press, and Addled, a social satire. She is a regular reviewer of climate and animal fiction at EcoLit Books.

The Language of Trees, A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten

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Cover of The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten

Tin House, 2023 Hermann Hesse once wrote that the key to existential joy was in learning how to listen to the trees. There is also great pleasure to be had …

Read the review: The Language of Trees, A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten

Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals

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Cover of On the Nature of Animals by Aelian, translated by Gregory McNamee

A toad can kill just by belching, and the lust of the octopus is blamed for its short lifespan. To produce a mule, the horse owner must give the mare a bad haircut to shame her into having sex with a donkey. The hedgehog is considered a spiteful animal because it urinates on itself when caught, unlike the lynx, who hides its urine until it forms a gem stone.

Such are a few of the many nuggets of animal lore recorded in Aelian’s On the Nature of Animals, a translation of De Natura Animalium by the third century Roman writer Claudius Aelianus, better know as Aelian.

Book Review: How To Be Animal, A New History of What it Means to Be Human

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Cover of How To Be Animal: A New History of What it Means to Be Human by Melanie Challenger

By Melanie Challenger, (Penguin Books, March, 2021) To call someone an animal is considered a grave insult, but it is also the truth. We, the humans, we are all animals. …

Read the review: Book Review: How To Be Animal, A New History of What it Means to Be Human