Welcome to almost spring in the northern hemisphere

The quote above is by Robert Macfarlane from Is a River Alive? The Rewilding our Stories Discord is reading it now in our book club, and, well, the book has won us over. After traveling to cloud-forests in Ecuador and the ruined rivers of India, most of the book club is now reading part three of the book. It takes place not far north of where I live, on the Quebec side of the Gulf of St Lawrence. So, I’m really digging this part the most. I know the rivers and lakes here, the Atlantic Ocean and its gulfs and bays, the black flies, the muskeg, and the mists. I’m dreaming of getting our kayaks out again, even though right now I have a terrible cold and we’re still surrounded by snow and ice.

What’s new at Dragonfly?

New Reddit community

I want to introduce a new Reddit community: Rewilding our Stories. The community is a place to chat about art and literature that's imbued with themes of climate, ecology, and environment. The Reddit is for chats about games, films, novels, poetry, performance art, visual art, music, podcasts, and really, any expression of art that brings in nature, environmental, sustainability, and more. So, this is ground floor, but you will find content there! I just really hope people join it.

I created this community because I’m running out of places on the internet that are still progressive for the most part. I’ve left Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook due to algorithms and data privacy concerns, corruption, and lack of moderation tools, which have led to so much dis- and misinformation in the world. Reddit at least allows you to build subreddits free of that, and the communities I’ve joined are pretty progressive. I also need a place for more positive discussion. I do care about politics, but we cannot breathe in it night and day or we’ll go insane. We need a place for building a better world too.

World ecofiction spotlight

I had the exciting honor to interview Ainehi Edoro, author of Forest Imaginaries: How African Novels Think. I absolutely loved this book, and Aineho, who is also the founder and editor of Brittle Paper, put a lot of engaging study into the book.

She says:

In many Indigenous African knowledge systems, the forest is a figure of knowledge. In Yoruba thought, for instance, the forest is a threshold that connects worlds. It is a place where different forms of knowledge come together. There is also a rich tradition of forest protagonists, often hunters or diviners, who know the forest intimately. They understand its plants and animals but also its spiritual and otherworldly dimensions. Because they move between these worlds, they are also sources of insight for their communities. They draw on forms of knowledge that help people navigate uncertainty, especially in moments when familiar institutions or ways of thinking no longer offer answers. In the book, I wanted readers to see how African fiction writers bring this idea of the forest into the novel and how this helps them create worlds informed by the urgency of questioning inherited ideas and imagining new possibilities. In that sense, there is a strong impulse toward revolutionary thinking at the heart of African fiction.

Article by Nina Munteanu

Occasionally, Dragonfly has guest authors. This month, a dear colleague, Nina Muntaeanu, talks about her new series The Icaria Trilogy and the first book, Gaia’s Revolution, an environmental thriller released March 10, 2026 by Dragon Moon Press.

Nina writes:

This book wrote itself quickly and furiously over a few months. I wrote it in the back yard of a good friend one summer under a kind sun as I contemplated what life after capitalism would look like in Canada. I’d read Peter Frase’s book [Four Futures: Life After Capitalism] and considered his four options for the future. What I read chilled me. In some ways Gaia’s Revolution is my response.

Book of the month

Last year a couple people at work found something mutual they love: Finnish-Swedish author Tove Jansson’s The Moomins. They encouraged me to read some of the books, so I finally read The Moomins and the Great Flood, an illustrated story of Moominmamma and Moomintroll traveling through a weird forest to find Moominpappa. Where was this story when I was a kid? I know it was out there; it just evidently wasn’t known to me for whatever reason. I would have devoured it then as I did now. Adventure, fright, ecologically weird, and fantastical stuff: I’m into it and love the illustrations too. To me, this book is Michael Beranos’ The Other Side of the Mountain but at the elementary school level. This story was the first Moomins book to be published (in 1945) but the last to be translated to English during its 60th anniversary in 2005.

Flashback

In 2018, when Dragonfly turned five, I added a legendarium category to the book type column in the database. I couldn’t think of where else to put authors like JRR Tolkien, who had contributed so much, not only to literature but to the growing field of nature subjects in literature. Who else grew up realizing that industry ruined the great outdoors? So, I made a post called The Middle-Earth Universe by JRR Tolkien and linked studies of Middle-Earth’s natural world and its interrelationships with free folk, ents, elves, and Eriador. It is now nearly eight years later and some of the links are broken, though I fixed them as best I can just now.

Wizards and Spaceships

Occasionally a member of The Rewilding Our Stories Discord, Rachel A. Rosen, posts episodes in a podcast series she runs with David L Clink: Wizards and Spaceships. Season 2, episode 11, Amazing Stories’ 100th Anniversary, talks with a few of Amazing Stories’ publishers and editors: Steve Davidson, Kermit Woodall, and Lloyd Penny. This episode looks at the last 100 years of Amazing Stories. I listened to this podcast as I wrote this newsletter. Highly recommended.

Resources

• Rewilding Our Stories: A Discord community where you can find resources, reading, and writing fun in fiction that relates strongly to nature and environment

• Reddit: Rewilding our Stories. A brand new place that needs your voice!

• 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 1,100 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

• World Eco-fiction Series: Climate Change and Beyond: This series travels the planet exploring fictional stories close to natural landscapes and wildlife, often with environmental concerns.

• Artists & Climate Change. This site is no longer being updated but still has a wealth of info. I was a core writer for their team, and I’m both honored and grateful. Look for my “Wild Authors” series there.