Midge Raymond 
The narrator of Henry Hoke’s slender, evocative novel Open Throat begins their story with, “I’ve never eaten a person but today I might.” Described by the book’s publisher as a “lonely, lovable, queer mountain lion” whose pronouns are they/them, the lion shares their journey from an urban park to a suburban home to a busy Los Angeles …
The term “Effective Altruism” has been buzzy for a while now and has attracted well-known followers and promoters — and because of this, the movement is generally associated with doing good. However, The Good It Promises, The Harm It Does: Critical Essays on Effective Altruism asks, “What if Effective Altruism, whatever the intentions of its leaders and …
Ashland Creek Press was thrilled to host Reading Animals/Writing Animals, sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Writers’ Union of Canada, with Siskiyou Prize winner and Among Animals 3 contributor Nadja Lubiw-Hazard — and we’re delighted to present a recording of the event. The live event on Wednesday, May 24, was filled …
Laurie Zaleski’s Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals is not only a memoir of a hardscrabble life but a lovely tribute to the woman who taught Laurie all she needed to create and run an animal sanctuary. Laurie’s mother, Annie McNulty, gave her the skills — hard work, determination, and a love …
In Pests: How Humans Create Animal Villains, Bethany Brookshire takes a look at myriad animals whom many humans consider pests, from squirrels to cats to elephants, and offers insights into how we can, and must, view animals differently as we coexist during an era of mass extinction. What constitutes a “pest” depends on the animal, …
Note: Readers hoping to avoid spoilers may wish to skip this review. Julie Carrick Dalton’s novel The Last Beekeeper, set in a world that has “come undone,” is the story of a young woman trying to understand her puzzling past as she navigates an uncertain future. Four years after aging out of the state care facility …
Cierra Horton McElroy’s debut novel, Atomic Family, is not an environmental novel of the twenty-first-century, yet its themes of impending nuclear devastation and eco-anxiety nevertheless feel all too real. Atomic Family is the story of Nellie, Dean, and their son, Wilson, with the novel’s main narrative playing out over a couple of days through these …
As with so many books about the plight of animals in today’s world, Martha C. Nussbaum’s Justice for Animals: Our Collective Responsibility needs to be read most of all by those who eat animals, visit zoos, buy puppies, and so on — in other words, those who may not realize (or who don’t wish to …
Coyote America: A Natural and Supernatural History by Dan Flores is excellent reading, especially for those of us who’ve shared our landscapes with these magnificent creatures. Flores’s knowledge of the science and history of the coyote is vast, compiled in a highly accessible narrative that combines research, experience, and interviews to create an inspiring portrait …
As a zoology student, Lucy Cooke was taught that the females of the species are exploited, weak, and passive. As a human animal, Cooke begged to differ. In Bitch: On the Female of the Species, she challenges this sexist mythology across species, from birds to primates to whales, showing that females can be just as sexually …
Alice Elliott Dark’s beautiful, sprawling novel Fellowship Point is about land and stewardship, about nature and conservation, but more than that, it is a book of friendship across the decades and about the complexities of women’s lives, told in part by two extraordinary narrators who experienced nearly a century of life in the world. Agnes …
Audrey Schulman’s The Dolphin House, inspired by a true story about dolphin research in St. Thomas in the 1960s, is a beautiful, thought-provoking read, at times as heartbreaking as it is fascinating. The novel reveals much about the vast intelligence of dolphins—and, at times, the lack thereof in humans—and offers a look at animals in …
While Jessie Greengrass’s remarkable novel The High House is set primarily in a grim future, this is not purely dystopian fiction—in fact, it feels far more contemporary, like a novel of our imminent reality. The High House doesn’t depict a world completely transformed by climate change as much as it reveals our world—a world slowly and inevitably ravaged as …
We are thrilled to announce the 2021 Siskiyou Prize winner and finalists! It was another record year of submissions, and we couldn’t be more pleased to see so many writers tacking climate change, the oceans, animal issues, and so many other topics related to the planet we call home. It’s inspiring to see how powerful …
Julian Sancton’s Madhouse at the End of the Earth tells the riveting, page-turning story of the Belgica’s multinational expedition to Antarctica, led by Belgian commandant Adrien de Gerlache. This may be not be among the best-known stories of Antarctic exploration, but it is certainly among the most harrowing, as well as the most haunting, with an abundance of …