Ah, deep summer! Welcome to another newsletter about fiction that’s ecologically aware, evolving, prescient. This is one of my favorite times of year, autumn being the first. Only a couple months until then, with the light of August squeezed in before the fade, reminding me of Faulkner. To learn more about the outside world I cling to, read about the etymology of bonefires, and our modern bonfires, in my Backyard Wildlife series this month. As always, you can visit Dragonfly.eco for more information about rewilded stories.
While you’re here, I have two new articles with book recommendations. One, at Climate Cultures, is Where Waters and Fictions Meet, which originally was published in Italian at in the journal TELLŪS 2-2021 as Otto romanzi ci ricordano del nostro legame fondamentale con l’Acqua: Eight Novels Remind of us Our Crucial Connection with Water.
The other is at Impkater: What is Eco-fiction and Why it Matters.
Book Recommendation of the Month
My friend of many years, Michael Rothenberg, has a book of poems out this summer by University of Washington Press: In Memory of a Banyan Tree. Hard to believe it was about two decades ago that I met Michael and we began working on projects dealing with art, nature, and writing. He is a true mentor, and recently shared some thoughts about people who have equally inspired him, such as Michael McClure and Joanne Kyger, whom were dear friends and like family. He was also great friends with Philip Whalen. (It’s purely coincidental that the photo of the book below is next to one of Michael McClure’s!) Once, Michael read some poems from Philip Whalen’s Overtime to me, and it was only then that I understood the power of taking breaths on a page—something that previously I’d only felt grief from, having to format all those lines all over the place. Banyan Tree is collection of poems relating to nature, ecology, and ecopoetics, selected from the expanse of Rothenberg's writings over the past thirty-five years. Rothenberg's many years as a horticulturist and his engagement in the environmental movement inform his work. These poems are a watershed account of an intimate relationship with the outside world. And they’re great!
World Eco-fiction Spotlight
It’s also coincidental in the photo above that you can see a book by Katie Welch on my shelf. I met Katie a few years back when I wrote to her about tree-planting in BC. She’s from Kamloops, BC, where my husband was born and raised. Katie eventually came to a reading in Vancouver’s Word on the Street, along with other authors I admire, such as Claudia Casper and Stephen Collis. We all read from our novels about climate change. This month I spotlight Katie and her new novel Mad Honey. It’s set partly in a couple places she’s visited that inspired the novel, including Cuba and a city in Ontario. With gorgeous descriptions, deft characterizations, and a page-turning plot, Mad Honey immerses the reader in a search for truth bounded by the everyday magic of beekeeping, family, and finding peace, all while asking how much we really understand about the natural world.
Movie Recommendation
I probably won’t make this a monthly recommendation, or maybe I will! I finally got to see the movie Men and have written a synopsis of it (spoilers included) at Dragonfly. I am blown away by almost everything Alex Garland does. I don’t always understand his movies, though. When he adapted Jeff VanderMeer’s Annihilation, I was disappointed that so many important scenes were omitted or changed that had just made the book for me, including the reason why the weird wilderness came alive in Area X. Garland’s interpretation was a little off the path of the novel, I thought, and did not deal with the things that seemed to have inspired VanderMeer’s writing of Area X (i.e. ruinous events like oil spills). While I liked the movie, I feel we must not be afraid to deal with actual ecological/climate issues in whatever weird, wild, or artsy form we can. We can build worlds that blow minds while writing about our planet but also create an experience rather than drafting a sermon. Anyway, Men, I liked even more. I guess a lot of people weren’t sure about it. But I am into the folk horror genre, and in this movie I saw direct parallels between the loss of nature and the evolution and history of patriarchy and religion.
Read With Us!
The Rewilding Our Stories Discord is reading Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s House of Rust. We read at our own pace, so it’s not so late to join in. Everyone seems to like this novel quite a bit. The style of this story is so strong: magical realism, a story of legends, an unlikely heroine whom we all fell in love with, and a song about the importance of other living creatures on Earth.
New Books
See below for several exciting new and upcoming books:
Emmi Itäranta’s The Moonday Letters (Titan, July 2022). Part space-age epistolary, part eco-thriller, and a love story between two individuals from very different worlds.
Rebecca Campbell’s Arboreality (Stelliform Press, September 2022). Campbell’s astonishing vision pulls the echoing effects of small acts and intimate moments through this multi-generational and interconnected story of how a West coast community survives the ravages of climate change.
Tasnuva Hayden’s An Orchid Astronomy (University of Calgary Press, July 2022). An Orchid Astronomy is the story of Sophie, of her personal trauma and of climate catastrophe, told in striking experimental poetry.
Sarah Tolmie’s All the Horses of Iceland (Tor, March 2022). All the Horses of Iceland is a delve into the secret, imagined history of Iceland's unusual horses, brought to life by an expert storyteller.
Jeff VanderMeer’s Bliss (Subterannean Press, fall 2022). Bliss incorporates details of physical culture so vivid that they stir sense memories, and details of counter-factual history so specific that they threaten to undermine reality. At the same time, VanderMeer’s deep fascination with how humanity interacts with the environment is a constant during the Glass Drifters’ journey.
One of our own books, Winds of Change (Dragonfly Publishing, August 2022), has a 2nd edition out this fall. This anthology is a diverse collection of eighteen insightful, witty, and emotional short stories about climate change. This book is part of Western Michigan University’s curriculum for teaching about literature and climate change.
Jaspreet Singh’s Face (TouchWood Editions, May 2022). In his playful yet deeply serious third novel, Singh links a fossil fraud in India, an ice core archive in Canada, and a climate change laboratory in Germany.
Lidia Yuknavitch’s Thrust (Penguin Publishing Group, June 2022). As rising waters—and an encroaching police state—endanger her life and family, a girl with the gifts of a carrier travels through water and time to rescue vulnerable figures from the margins of history.
Rae Mariz’s Weird Fishes (Stelliform Press, August 2022). Weird Fishes is a lyrical and heartfelt adventure that celebrates how the ocean connects us all and reminds us that we need to take good care of Her.
Resources
In case you’ve missed these exciting resources at Dragonfly, which are constantly being updated, check ‘em out!
World’s biggest playlist? Our environmental/nature song-of-the-week playlist goes back to 2015.
Book recommendations: a growing list of recs.
Eco/climate genres: They’re all over the place, and here’s an expanding compendium
Inspiring and informative author quotes from Dragonfly’s interviews
List of ecologically focused games
List of eco/climate films and documentaries
Eco-fiction links and resources
Book database: Database of over 900 book posts at Dragonfly.eco
Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation: Fiction aimed toward children, teens, and young adults
Indie Corner: The occasional highlight of authors who publish independently
Backyard Wildlife: A hidden gem exploring how we are rewilding our own backyard and meadow
Artists & Climate Change. This is an extraordinary resource delving into all kinds of the arts focused on climate change. For a while now they’ve been rerunning my world eco-fiction spotlights. I’m a core writer for their team, and I’m both honored and grateful. Look for my “Wild Authors” series there.
Copyright 2024 Mary Woodbury