Welcome to our fourth newsletter! This news is based upon my work at Dragonfly.eco, a place to find meaningful stories about our natural world and humanity’s connection with it. Dragonfly explores the wild, crazy, and breathtaking literary trail of eco-fiction, with a large book database, spotlights, interviews, and more. Our motto is “blowing your mind with wild words and worlds.” The site raises awareness of the impact of, and diversity in, storytelling around the world that explores climate change and related ecological themes. Fiction covering this territory is steeped in other genres, ranging from science fiction to fantasy to the weird to magical realism to Afrofuturism to Indigenious speculative fiction. You can find out more about the wonderful world of eco-fiction here.
Our News
Dragonfly’s May World Eco-fiction spotlight is on Yaba Badoe and her new novel Wolf Light. It’s a beautiful tale of three young women, born in the wolf light, tackling environmental crises in their locales: the mountainous area of Gobi-Altai near the Gobi desert of Mongolia, the tropical forest region of Ghana in West Africa, and the stormy moors of Cornwall in England.
Featured in the Indie Corner is Jaimee Wriston and her novel How Not to Drown. I can’t lie. I am so intrigued by this novel! Themes of drowning and submergence exist throughout this contemporary and historical novel that traces a family’s origins back to the brutal “clearances” on the Isle of Skye in Scotland and up to the present day and climate change.
An ongoing invitation to join the Rewilding Our Stories Discord. Today we’re writing tomorrow’s nature novels and using tools like NaNoWriMo and Winnie Bot’s daily writing goals to help us. Be sure to follow the simple instructions when joining in order to gain access to the rest of the community.
Rewilding Our Stories began a book club in May and is now reading the wonderful book Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer. We’re still reading the very first part of the book, so it’s not too late to join.
The Discord community built an Earth Day: What We’re Reading List from our many conversations.
Also, check out Dragonfly’s new Book Recommendations section!
Ecology Action Centre’s spring magazine presents my article celebrating Canadian authors of environmental fiction.
I’m so happy to announce my participation in Scotland’s Cymera Festival. I’ll be joining Bijal Vachharajani, Lauren James, and James Bradley in a panel on writing climate/eco-fictions. This will air on Youtube, June 5.
In Other News
Tor.com has another list of Ten Eco-fiction Novels by Nina Munteanu.
Though it was published around Earth Day, these novels boosted by NPR are for every day.
Book Riot lists three new dystopian novels of the environmental kind.
Game Rant reports a reboot of Perfect Dark, this one with an eco-sci-fi twist.
On May 26th is a talk called Children’s Fiction and the Climate Crisis, with Ele Fountain, Hannah Gold, and Piers Torday–hosted by Pushkin’s Children’s Books and Tales on Moon Lane.
Other 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, which goes back to 2016.
List of eco/climate films and documentaries
Ecofiction links and resources
Book database (with well over 800 titles)
Turning the Tide: The Youngest Generation (fiction aimed toward children, teens, and young adults)
Indie Corner: New as of last summer, we give a hats off to authors who publish independently
Backyard Wildlife: A new-ish hidden gem exploring how my husband and I are rewilding our own back yard and meadow
Artists & Climate Change. This is an extraordinary resource delving into all of the arts and climate change. For a while now they’ve been rerunning older world eco-fiction spotlight authors from Dragonfly. Recently they’ve made me a core writer for their team, and I’m both honored and grateful. Look for my “Wild Authors” series there.
Copyright 2024 Mary Woodbury