Articles by: Mary Woodbury

Waiting for the Night Song, Julie Carrick Dalton

A startling and timely debut, Julie Carrick Dalton’s Waiting for the Night Song is a moving, brilliant novel about friendships forged in childhood magic and ruptured by the high price of secrets that leave you forever changed. Goodreads Reviews Back to GoodReads

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The Forever Sea, Joshua Phillip Johnson

The first book in a new environmental epic fantasy series set in a world where ships kept afloat by magical hearthfires sail an endless grass sea. On the never-ending, miles-high expanse of prairie grasses known as the Forever Sea, Kindred Greyreach, hearthfire keeper and sailor aboard harvesting vessel The Errant, […]

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Indie Corner – Joel Burcat

Back to the Indie Corner series It’s been cool to meet Joel Burcat, an author and recently retired environmental lawyer, who has written a series of environmental legal thrillers. The first, Drink to Every Beast, was featured by Kirkus Reviews, Good Day PA, the Green Life Blue Water blog, and […]

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Eco-fiction Books Coming in 2021

I learned a basic model in an anthropology class long ago, that a cultural pyramid’s base was the environment and all else drew from that, including technology, economy, polity, and ideology. As the planet continues to face multiple ecological crises, not the least of which is climate change, authors around […]

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Wolf Light, Yaba Badoe

When copper miners plunder Zula’s desert home in Gobi Altai, and Adoma’s forest and river are polluted by gold prospectors, it is only a matter of time before the lake Linet guards with her life is also in jeopardy. How far will Zula, Adoma and Linet go to defend the […]

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Spotlight – Christiane Vadnais

Click here to return to the series We’ll end the crazy year of 2020 on a positive note, with a look at the lyrical novel Fauna by Christiane Vadnais. Here, we travel to the Arctic Circle (as indicated by Ursus maritimus), but the novel’s setting is fictional and inspired by […]

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How in the Heck Does a Yard Inspire Writing?

Back to Series I always think of Jeff VanderMeer’s prolific Twitter feed, where he talks about writing as well as about his backyard wildlife. He has a lovely camera and tweets a ton about all the stuff happening in his back yard, but I am not so active on Twitter. […]

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The Winds of Change: Children’s Environmental Climate Fiction

Author: © Claire Datnow Type: Essay Back to the Dragonfly Library The Winds of Change: Children’s Environmental Climate Fiction The gale force winds of climate change are calling. They’re calling to scientists, writers, and artists to weave stories that will inspire the children of tomorrow to dream up a brighter […]

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Loveoid, JL Morin – Review

Loveoid by JL Morin Release date: December 6, 2020 Genre: eco-fiction, literary fiction, speculative fiction Price: $11.95; 276 pages ISBN: 978-1-941861-54-7 Available at Gardeners, Bertrams, Ingram, Baker & Taylor, and bookstores everywhere Review by Mary Woodbury Loveoid, the new novel from JL Morin, aims to change the evolutionary trajectory of […]

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King and the Dragonflies, Kacen Callender

King and the Dragonflies by Kacen Callender won the National Book Award for Young People’s Literature at the 71st Annual National Book Awards presented by the National Book Foundation! Twelve-year-old Kingston James is sure his brother Khalid has turned into a dragonfly. When Khalid unexpectedly passed away, he shed what […]

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Ardenweald, Gaming with Attention to Myth and Forest

Today’s insight is a departure from my usual focus on written eco-fiction as I enter into the gaming world, specifically that of World of Warcraft’s (WoW’s) Shadowlands and one of its zones, Ardenweald. Shadowlands is the newest expansion of what some of us classic folks refer to, sometimes derogatorily, as […]

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Margarita, Anni Kytömäki

Margarita won Finlandia Prize for the best fiction book of the year. “I have dedicated this book to the silent ones of water and earth – the ones that are in danger to be left behind in our society and in the face of [the global] ecological crisis. –Twitter Kun […]

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Leave the World behind, Rumaan Alam

When the end of the world as we know it comes about in Rumaan Alam’s gripping third novel, Leave the World Behind, the two families brought together in the indulgent surroundings of a Long Island country retreat feel, well, uneasy. There’s no big moment, no flash of white light, alien […]

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Indie Corner – Ian Boyd and Gary Luck

Back to the Indie Corner series I was happy to meet Ian Boyd and Gary Luck by way of their new children’s novel Melody Finch, a story about the hardships of drought in Australia’s Murray Darling Basin river system, as seen through the eyes of its native wildlife. Ian Boyd’s […]

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Winter Is Coming: A Second Wave of Covid-19 Is Too

Back to Series Recently in the New York Times, a woman bragged about our province being Covid-19-free. It’s a little early to be bragging about that, I thought. The Halifax subreddit seemed to think the article was a little smug. While the rest of the world has suffered terribly, as […]

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