One day a few years ago I was telling a friend about my aunt and she suggested I Google her. Since Lucybelle died in 1966 and was just a farm girl from Arkansas, I didn’t expect to find anything. But I did: two items popped up on the internet. One was […]
Read MoreAll
Strange as this Weather Has Been, Ann Pancake
Set in present day West Virginia, Ann Pancake’s debut novel, Strange As This Weather Has Been, tells the story of a coal mining family— a couple and their four children— living through the latest mining boom and dealing with the mountaintop removal and strip mining that is ruining what is […]
Read MoreWild Things, Jaimee Wriston Colbert
Brace yourself for Jaimee Wriston Colbert’s Wild Things. These linked rural noir stories unfold their wings near the Susquehanna River in a landscape graced by wildlife and haunted by lost property, “business after business failing, padlocking their doors, factories with their boarded up windows, just another has-been town slowly shutting […]
Read MoreMr. Eternity, Aaron Thier
“I was thinking a lot about how much the rhythms of life are determined by the place where we live,” the 32-year-old author said, in a conversation from his current home in central Great Barrington. “I was sitting there in the New England winter, looking outside and imagining what it […]
Read MoreThe Trees, Ali Shaw
The Trees is a bold, intriguing conceit for a dystopian environmental novel…The strength of the novel – Shaw’s third – is in the visceral descriptions of the forest: the reader feels, smells and hears the trees, convincingly portrayed as sinister, formidable and with unnerving intentions of their own. Shaw gradually […]
Read MoreJagannath, Karin Tidbeck
Enter the strange and wonderful world of Swedish sensation Karin Tidbeck with this feast of darkly fantastical stories. Whether through the falsified historical record of the uniquely weird Swedish creature known as the “Pyret” or the title story, “Jagannath,” about a biological ark in the far future, Tidbeck’s unique imagination […]
Read MoreOnce in Blockadia, Stephen Collis
Occasionally we add prose and poetry that creatively circumvent issues of the environment. In an Eco-fiction stage at the 2016 Word Vancouver, Mr. Collis read with others whose works call for at least thought, if not action, on some aspect of an environmental crisis. What happens when a poetry professor […]
Read MoreNutshell, Ian McEwan
Some of the novel’s most eloquent passages capture the state of our peril: “A combination, poverty and war, with climate change held in reserve, driving millions from their homes, an ancient epic in new form, vast movements of people, like engorged rivers in spring, Danubes, Rhines and Rhones of angry […]
Read MoreHalf Wild Stories, Robin MacArthur
MacArthur’s Half Wild shows that humans abuse and domineer nature — and women — at their own peril. Though few of MacArthur’s tales are told from the male perspective, those that do make short shrift of nature writing’s traditionally sexist rhetoric. -Pacific Standard Magazine, September 22, 2016, “From Muir to Matriarchs: The New, Female-Penned […]
Read MoreThe Spawning Grounds, Gail Anderson-Dargatz
Sharp imagery and spare dialogue are put to good use in Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s ghost tale of a mysterious force intent on destroying a family in rural British Columbia. The Globe and Mail The long-awaited new novel by the two-time Giller-shortlisted author is full of the qualities Gail Anderson-Dargatz’s fans love: […]
Read MoreThe Way of Water, Nina Munteanu
Thanks to Nina Munteanu for the following information on two new books on water. The Way of Water is a near-future vision that explores the nuances of corporate and government corruption and deceit together with resource warfare. An ecologist and technologist, Nina Munteanu uses both fiction and non-fiction to examine […]
Read MoreThe Risen, Ron Rash
During our conversation on the eve of Rash’s trip to France for an Eco-Literature convention, where the theme was “Enchantment,” he tells me that “One thing that’s important for me in my work is to remind people that there is a natural world. It’s very easy to think we are […]
Read MoreJesus and Magdalene, João Cerqueira
Thanks to João Cerqueira for information about his novel Jesus and Magdalene, published by Line by Lion Publications in July 2016. It is available for order at Amazon. The novel won the silver medal at the 2015 Latino Book Awards with the original title A segunda vinda de Cristo à […]
Read MoreThe Silence Spreading across the Natural World
Author: © Donna Mulvenna Type: Prose Author Links: YouTube, Goodreads, Pinterest, Facebook “The earth has music for those who listen.” – George Santayana I see a lot of trees from my office window. Although, I don’t actually have a window. I don’t have walls either. Or a roof. I have […]
Read MoreNight of the Animals, Bill Broun
Broun packs his novel with futuristic invention, Chablis-dry humor and a thick, dreamy nostalgia for the midsummer mayhem of Puck and his retinue — that old, good Britain. –New York Times, “The Shortlist / Eco-Fiction” Night of the Animals is an enchanting and inventive tale that explores the boundaries of […]
Read More