nonfiction
New and forthcoming environmental books (March 2025)
I’m happy to share a new selection of environmentally themed books — including poetry, fiction and nonfiction. Please check them out… Green to Grey: An Environmental Anthology Edited by Ian Thomas Shaw and Timothy P. Niedermann The eclectic stories in this anthology speak to our changing climate and degrading environment—the transformation of our world from …
Writing Opportunity: Unearthed Literary Journal
Another opportunity to pass along! We invite writers, poets, artists, and creatives to submit to our upcoming Spring 2024 issue, exploring the themes of resurgence, restoration, and renewal. We encourage you to interpret the theme broadly. We welcome fiction, nonfiction, poetry, visual art, photo essays, and short films that attend to places of quiet resurgence, …
Book Review: FIRE WEATHER by John Vaillant
John Vaillant’s Fire Weather: A True Story from a Hotter World is not only the story of the devastating 2016 Fort McMurray fire in Alberta, Canada, but also a history of fire, the oil industry, climate science, and where we go from here. In addition to the page-turning narrative of the fire that raged through Fort McMurray, Fire …
Book Review: FUNNY FARM by Laurie Zaleski
Laurie Zaleski’s Funny Farm: My Unexpected Life with 600 Rescue Animals is not only a memoir of a hardscrabble life but a lovely tribute to the woman who taught Laurie all she needed to create and run an animal sanctuary. Laurie’s mother, Annie McNulty, gave her the skills — hard work, determination, and a love …
Culture is Home: Becoming Wild: How Animal Cultures Raise Families, Create Beauty, and Achieve Peace
Guest book review by Gene Helfman. MacArthur Fellow Carl Safina established himself among the legion of environmental journalists with his first book, the award-winning Song for the Blue Ocean. In Song, he detailed the causes of and solutions to declining fish populations, especially those overharvested in commercial fisheries. In (also award-winning) Eye of the Albatross, he lamented the …
Book Review: The Meaning of Birds by Simon Barnes
In The Meaning of Birds, Simon Barnes traces the history of birds—as well as humans’ relationships and interactions with them—over several millennia and across multiple continents. Barnes is a UK-based nature writer, so North American readers will enjoy an opportunity to become more familiar with Britain’s backyard birds, such as the wood pigeon, the Scottish …
Book Review: Irreplaceable by Julian Hoffman
In Irreplaceable: The Fight to Save Our Wild Places, Julian Hoffman shows us endangered habitats and the creatures who inhabit them—as well as the humans who are fighting to save these fragile landscapes. He puts us vividly within these places, portraying just how special and vulnerable they are, and also shows us the passion, dedication, …
The best environmental books we’ve read in 2020
Not surprisingly, we’ve been doing quite a bit of reading this year. Here are some of our favorite books. And not all of them were new in 2020. We reviewed Braiding Sweetgrass back in 2019, and it’s comforting to see that book rise to the top of our collective consciousness (a seven-year old overnight success …
Book Review: The Great Derangement
With the future state of the planet in question, Amitav Ghosh explores the roles of literature and history in terms of their place in the climate crisis in his book The Great Derangement. Ghosh, a fiction writer who has experienced climate catastrophes in South Asia, structures his argument in three parts: Stories, History, and Politics. …
Writing Opportunity: Terrain Contest in Poetry, Nonfiction and Fiction
Terrain, one of the premier environmental journals, is now holding its 10th-annual writing contest across three genres. The judges are: Camille T. Dungy, PoetryCamille T. Dungy, the award-winning author of Trophic Cascade and four other poetry collections, is the editor of Black Nature: Four Centuries of African American Nature Poetry. Alison Hawthorne Deming, NonfictionAlison Hawthorne Deming is the author …
