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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936) was not the first scientist to test on animals, nor was he the last. But he is perhaps the most famous. And he has somehow escaped mainstream …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.