Philosopher Albert Camus summed it up best when he wrote: “The purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself.” The books we’ve highlighted below include a number of writers, including our reviewers, who are trying to do just that. We hope you enjoy the reviews and that you support these amazing writers. …
When I look at visitor stats for the past year, EcoLit Books has seen a steady increase in the number of daily visitors. We now average just over 200 unique visitors per day, with many days surpassing 300 and a few days over 500. For a website devoted to environmental and animal literature, these are …
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 …
Creativity is something that is easier to identify than to explain. And one person’s definition of creativity may vary from your definition. For proof, you need only enter the modern art wing of a museum to hear “Why is that art?” uttered. But though creativity may be in the eye of the beholder, nobody would …
By Mary Roach W. W. Norton & Co, 2021 Review by JoeAnn Hart “Like a deer in the headlights,” we say about someone who freezes in the face of impending doom. Why is that? Why don’t deer jump out of the way when they see us coming in our speeding metal machines? Mary Roach will …
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 …
Winner of the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry, Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem is a powerful collection of ecopoetry that forefronts the interconnectedness of humans, animals, land, and water. Throughout, Diaz also underscores the relationship between the destruction of America’s natural landscapes and resources and the genocide of its indigenous peoples, demonstrating how ecological and …
As a fan of the Rachel Carson Center I was excited to see the recent launch of the first edition of Springs, their new environmental journal: The Rachel Carson Center (RCC) is pleased to announce the launch of Springs: The Rachel Carson Center Review. Our new open-access online publication features peer-reviewed articles, creative nonfiction, and artistic contributions that …
Kingfishers are birds more often heard than seen. Walk next to Bear Creek here in the Rogue Valley and you will probably hear them, though seeing them is not so easy. Fortunately, we have a new book about the kingfisher by Marina Richie to shed light on this fascinating bird. Marina takes us along with …
Before you read further, please note that this opportunity is intended for scholars and educators in Environmental Humanities. I’m not but, reading this, I wish I was… The University of Oregon Center for Environmental Futures is pleased to announce that we are now accepting applications for the fourth annual Understories Writers’ Workshop in the Environmental …
There is only so much time to read all the amazing books we receive here at EcoLit Books. So I wanted to at least mention a few titles in our To Be Read stack knowing that we might not actually get to them soon, and not for lack of interest. Judging by the brief time …
The subtitle of the must-read book The Insect Crisis by Oliver Milman is The Fall of the Tiny Empires that Run the World. Tiny empires indeed. Consider the following: Three out of four species on this planet are insects. There are more species of assassin fly on this planet (7,500+) than the entire world of …
We’ve mentioned these amazing residencies in the past but deadlines are coming up for the year ahead and I wanted to mention them again — also since I suspect many of us are eager to go somewhere, anywhere… Friends of Lakeside Lab 2020 Writer in Residence (Iowa) As in the past, the residencies will take …
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, February 2022 (Published in the UK as The Sea is Not Made of Water) Life Between the Tides is my kind of book. British author, Adam Nicolson, grandson of Vita Sackville-West, sets out to write about tide pools and the intertidal zone, but those subjects turn out to be just launching …
Passing along an interesting writing opportunity… Ecocene: Cappadocia Journal of Environmental Humanities Stories are how we come to know the world. They shape our propensity to believe in, engage with, and respond to, the world around us. They inspire and confront, open and close, breathe and compress, the landscape of imaginative possibility. With each issue …