Exodus 2022 by Kenneth G. Bennett (author of the young adult novels, The Gaia Wars and Battle for Cascadia), succeeds nicely as an eco-lit foray into the thriller category set in the Pacific Northwest. It follows genre conventions well by moving along at a nice clip, ending each short chapter with a hook, and teasing …
The environmental literary journal Terrain has opened submissions to its annual contest — for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. You have until September 1 to submit. Here’s the link. I’m happy to see that Julian Hoffman will be judging the nonfiction category. His book The Small Heart of Things: Being at Home in a Beckoning World recently won the AWP …
Living Oil: Petroleum Culture in the American Century by Stephanie LeMenager is an academic book and priced accordingly. In other words, this is not the sort of book you’d find in an airport bookstore. Perhaps it should be. This book provides historical and cultural insights into our complex relationship with oil — from the “peak discovery” period of the …
The world needs more romantic comedies and more books with vegetarian protagonists and The Green and the Red (May 2014) responds delightfully. Add this to your summer reading list for the beach, plane or train. It’s a fun, quick read. As a bonus, Le Vert Le Rouge, by Armand Chauvel translated by Elizabeth Lyman, is …
The interior section of Cape Ann, which includes Gloucester and Rockport, is called Dogtown. It was the earliest part of the Cape to be settled, and was later abandoned, so that its only occupants for many years were dogs, witches, and other assorted outcasts. It is still largely undeveloped. “Why here?” visitors ask,
The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2013. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Edited by Siddhartha Mukherjee. Tim Folger, Series Editor… Science is a scary word. At least, it used to be for those of us who grew up messing around in the hazy world of literature and art, not empirical facts. Science was what made it …
I enjoyed this recent New York Times article on universities using fiction (or “cli-fi”) to teach climate change. I particularly enjoyed seeing our own University of Oregon represented. Go Ducks! From the article: University courses on global warming have become common, and Prof. Stephanie LeMenager’s new class here at the University of Oregon has all …
We are thrilled to hear the news that Karen Joy Fowler (our judge for this year’s Siskiyou Prize) is the winner of the 2014 PEN/Faulkner Award for her amazing novel We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves. As the Washington Post writes, “With its disturbing portrayal of the abuse that chimps endure, We Are All Completely …
As children, we read short fairytales and fables in which animals joined humans on quests or spoke and explored together. As adults, we may have turned to a reading life of ponderous nonfiction and novels with nary an animal. If so, it’s time to reconsider. To add one good animal story to your reading diet, …
I stumbled on Elliot Schrefer’s young adult novel Endangered while searching my library’s catalog for fiction about endangered species. Other than two genre novels, this was the only hit and it felt, well, a little too obvious. I probably should have noticed this title when it was released in 2012, or at the very least …
