By Tom Comitta Coffee House Press, 2023 Reviewed by JoeAnn Hart “No words of my own can be added anywhere in the novel,” writes The Nature Book’s author, Tom Comitta, with a nod to the Oulipo group[1] and a whiff of Sol LeWitt[2], as he defines the constraints and rules of this extraordinary novel. Every …
When the U.S. Army set out to eliminate Native Americans, they first “eradicated the web of life that sustained them,” most notably by slaughtering all the buffalo that they depended on, then depleting the land itself with herds of imported cattle. “The genocide of the Amerindian peoples was the beginning of the modern world for Europe – bringing vast wealth to those countries.”
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. …
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 …
DEFENSIBLE SPACES, stories by Alison Turner Torrey House Press February 2023 Fire! It’s everywhere in Alison Turner’s tightly knit collection of stories, from fireworks to a flaming ham, “a pink plastic hunk the size of a baby.” Everyone in the small post-mining community of Clayton, Colorado, elevation 8,236 feet, seems to have a lit cigarette …
As environmental activists have made clear for decades, the preservation of Earth’s forests is essential to the existence of life. And, yet, continued exploitation of this resource and the simultaneous warming of Earth have placed forests in a precarious situation. The boreal forest is one of the largest biomes on Earth, second only to the …
In 2016, we began compiling lists of the best books we read that year (new or old, it didn’t matter). And now here we are in 2021, and we’ve got another wonderful list of the best environmental books we’ve read this year. These may not be the books you’ll find in the top lists of …
Living in Southern Oregon, not far north of where Ash Davidson’s Damnation Spring is set, I’ve grown used to passing trucks that are overloaded with timber, and mountainsides bare from clear-cuts. Knowing that this novel is about logging redwoods in the late 1970s, I wasn’t sure how biased I might be, as an reader who is decidedly …
Two new books to keep an eye out for. First, a story collection from Black Lawrence Press featuring a story by our own JoeAnn Hart! Fire & Water: Stories from the Anthropocene A Sámi woman studying Alaska fish populations sees our past and future through their present signs of stress and her ancestral knowledge. A …
ASLE (The Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) is holding its conference online from July 26 to August 6. Keynote presentations include: Aimee Nezhukumatathil, poet and author of World of Wonders Brionté McCorkle, Executive Director of Georgia Conservation Voters Anthropologist and geographer Zoe Todd and sound artist AM Kanngieser, collaborating on “Environmental Kin …
Cassie Premo Steele is the author of Earth Joy Writing: Creating Harmony through Journaling and Nature, which was published by Ashland Creek Press in 2015. Since then, Cassie published two books of poetry: Beautiful Waters recounts her honeymoon in Oregon with her wife, and Tongues in Trees is a book of collected and new poems. She also published a new …
Here’s a new anthology that is in need of contributors… We are thrilled to announce our first anthology that features poets, writers, and artists from around the world. This collection will be published online and in print paperback copies. It will be accompanied by an interactive Plant Diary. This plant diary is a tool you …
Crimes against man and nature collide in Waiting for the Night Song, a vivid and compelling environmental thriller by Julie Carrick Dalton. Dalton is a journalist, writer, and frequent speaker on the topic of writing fiction in the age of climate crisis, an area of expertise that shines through in her debut novel. Cadie Kessler …
The stories and essays of Touching Creatures, Touching Spirit: Living in a Sentient World form a beautiful tapestry of communications across species and consciousness. From grateful dragonflies to fatherless strawberries to companionable stones, poet and activist Judy Grahn details meaningful connections from her own experiences of the sentient world. Throughout her firsthand accounts, she weaves in histories …
Véronique Tadjo’s slender, haunting novel In the Company of Men offers myriad points of view—human and nonhuman—in its story of the Ebola epidemic in West Africa in 2014. Published in French in 2017 and in English in 2021, it’s a timely novel that makes important connections, revealing the devastating impact of how humans treat the …