I was once told that a weed is simply a plant out of place. Indeed, one person’s weed may be another person’s precious resource. In Love Them to Death: Turning Invasive Plants into Local Economic Opportunities, editor Wendy L. Applequist has assembled a diverse mix of essays documenting the many ways that “invasive” species are …
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 …
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. …
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 …
In HOMES, interdisciplinary poet Moheb Soliman traces the intricate borders of the Great Lakes—Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior (HOMES)—and explores the meanings of home, place, and identity in the spaces where water meets land and nature meets industry. This stunning collection of postmodern ecopoetry prods the ironies that live in these in-between spaces. Soliman excavates …
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 …
Beautifully illustrated, the heartwarming story of A Garden to Save the Birds begins with the “BAP!” of a bird flying into a window. Young Callum and his sister Emmy run outside to see the bird flying away. At first, Callum and Emmy are confused: why did the bird fly into their window? Realizing the window’s reflection of …
PANK Magazine is now accepting works (poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, hybrid) for a special issue: Environmental Futures Folio, guest edited by Aram Mrjoian. Here’s the call: The health and sustainability of our environment continues to be threatened and detrimentally harmed in real time. This folio is a call for art that not only considers imagined …
Dahr Jamail’s The End of Ice: Bearing Witness and Finding Meaning in the Path of Climate Disruption is at once a memoir of the author’s experiences in nature and a report of the state of the planet amid rapid climate change. This well-researched, passionate book is about the end of more than ice—Jamail takes us …
Paul Shapiro’s book Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World explores the fascinating — and potentially planet-saving — world of cultured meat. While the notion of “cultured meat” or “lab-grown” meat may sound odd to many, Shapiro’s book makes the case for why this new industry is among our …
Okay, so this isn’t a book review — but it’s such an important documentary that I wanted to review it here on EcoLit Books. (The book connection: As you watch the film, you’ll learn about a few books to add to your reading list, including Comfortably Unaware and The World Peace Diet.) Cowspiracy (which is currently still available for …
