Willard Scott (for the young ones out there: America’s weather person) once said: “Everyone complains about the weather, but nobody ever seems to do anything about it.” You could say the same thing about climate change. There is no shortage of books about climate grief these days, and I empathize, but I also think we …
Let me begin this review by saying that university presses and small presses have published some of the most creative and thought-provoking environmental literature I’ve read over the past few years. In this case, I want to praise the University of California Press for publishing the impressive work of author Christina Gerhardt and her collaborators, …
New this year from Milkweed Editions is a must-read essay collection of powerful Black nature writing. Originated and edited by Erin Sharkey, A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars is a stunning and needed anthology. These essays by eleven contemporary writers address the presence of Black people and their contributions not only …
It’s fire season here in southern Oregon. Which is another way of way of saying it’s just another season here in southern Oregon. Over the past decade fires have become a year-round occurrence — if not wildfires then prescribed burns. Smoke is an ever-present reminder of the dangers of wildfire. As are the empty lots …
So many new and exciting novels and books of nonfiction and poetry have come across our desks and inboxes as of late. Here are just a handful that caught our eyes… B/RDS Beatrice Szymkowiak B/RDS endeavors to dismantle discourses that create an artificial distinction between nature and humanity through a subversive erasure of an iconic work …
While reading The Devil’s Element: Phosphorous and a World Out of Balance by Dan Egan I happened to come across this article in The New York Times about a growing crisis along the Cape driven by antiquated septic systems. According to the article: More waste also means more phosphorus entering the Cape’s freshwater ponds, where …
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 …
The end of the world is not for the faint of heart, and neither is Thea Prieto’s bold and beautiful novella about four humans pushed to the limits of climate catastrophe. Echoing the style of myths and examining the power of storytelling, From the Caves is about Sky, a young man coming of age and …
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 …
Kathryn Savage is a writer based in Minneapolis whose work has appeared in American Short Fiction, Ecotone Magazine, the Virginia Quarterly Review, BOMB, and the anthology Rewilding: Poems for the Environment. She recently chatted with EcoLit Books about her essay Groundglass and the intersections of pollution and human health. You can read the EcoLit Books review of Groundglass here. …
Kathryn Savage’s gorgeous lyric essay Groundglass is a poetic reckoning with environmental pollution and its unavoidable connection to human bodies. In the book, available August 2nd from Coffee House Press, Savage blends tough questions about external systems with nuanced reflections on internal harm. Savage chooses the lyric essay, a hybrid form combining poetry and essay, as the conduit …
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 …
If you were expecting a book called “Environment” to include an inspiring exploration of how trees communicate, poetic scenes of dolphins swimming gracefully through a blue ocean or an examination of sparkling lakes in gorgeous national parks, you’d be in for a downer surprise. The environmental overview that is Environment by Rolf Halden is instead—as the plastic …
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 …