Reading non-fiction books about climate change has, over the years, come to feel like a form of masochism. Rarely do I come away feeling optimistic about the future of this planet and, honestly, it has taken an emotional toll. Which is why I’d much rather read novels that tackle climate change (and not necessarily of …
I’m excited to be sharing this writing opportunity. It’s not every day that a literary journal asks specifically for animal-centric literature. The Bellevue Literary Review is publishing a theme issue titled Animalia. Here are the details: Animalia: What animals can teach us about being humanHealth is not simply a human concept. The experience of inhabiting …
Here are a number of recently published or about-to-be-published books that have come across our desks. Love Story with Birds By Derek Furr “Let us be at a loss for words,” writes Derek Furr in Love Story with Birds. He writes this, as he writes everything in this collection of his stories, poems, and essays, with an …
We have the pandemic to thank for this eye-opening, empathetic and long-overdue tribute to one of our most misunderstood and widely despised relatives. The rat. And I use relative intentionally as I learned from the book that the human species descends from rats. During the early days of Covid, while so many people were out …
Random House, 2023 “Shivers of lust passed through his elytra as he found her scent grow stronger,” and there we are, in the head of an Elm Bark beetle, one of many POVs in the thoroughly enchanting novel North Woods by Daniel Mason. The beetle had been deposited in this wooded piece of land in …
Amazing books keep coming our way and we’re pleased to share a few of them this month. Enjoy! Any Human Power by Manda Scott Sometimes it takes a revolution to change the world, sometimes it takes a relationship. The visionary new novel from Manda Scott, author of the Boudica series. As Lan lies dying, she …
What do we know about life in the ocean, and what can the varied forms of life there teach us about our own lives and selves? These are the questions Sabrina Imbler (they/them), a writer and science journalist living in Brooklyn, New York, artfully, playfully, and joyfully explores in How Far the Light Reaches: A …
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was not the first scientist to test on animals, now was he the last. But he is perhaps the most famous. And he has somehow escaped mainstream scrutiny in how he and his lab treated dogs. In college, when I learned about Pavlov and classical conditioning, I never considered how Pavlov tested …
A few years ago, I was standing alongside Bear Creek, a small waterway in Southern Oregon, camera in hand, when a river otter approached. I captured the photo, thrilled to have not only seen a river otter so close but one that apparently was not so afraid of me. The otter quickly disappeared underwater and, …
EcoLit contributor Bill Streever has a new book out, A Sea Full of Turtles, and it provides a hopeful antidote to the more dystopian environmental literature in bookstores today. Bill’s book left me feeling optimistic. I hope it does for you as well. I recently asked Bill about the book and here’s what he had …
Sharon J. Wishnow’s debut novel, The Pelican Tide—set on Grand Isle, Louisiana, in 2010, just before the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill—is both an intense environmental disaster story and a heartwarming story of a family finding their way back to one another after a series of devastating events. Josie Babineaux is a chef, mother, newly …
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.
Here’s the latest batch of books to come across our desks — enjoy! The first book is written by the founder of an amazing chicken rescue organization, Sweet Peeps, based in Mobile, Alabama. If you’ve never visited an animal sanctuary (not a zoo) you’re missing out. And you don’t have to go to Alabama to …
It was while working on a film script set in the Pacific Northwest that journalist John O’Connor began to see Bigfoot everywhere: “On CBD oil and air fresheners. On car polish and coronavirus masks. On scented candles and Nalgene bottles and maple syrup and vile, undrinkable IPA.” But is Bigfoot an “actual zoological possibility or …
The title card at the end of Cheryl Dunye’s The Watermelon Woman, a classic of the New Queer Cinema film movement, reads “Sometimes you have to create your own history.” In the instance of The Watermelon Woman, Dunye creates the fictitious historical narrative of a lesbian filmmaker and her actress lover. Yamashita takes a similar …
