Writing for deer; writing for animals

Summer in Ashland, Oregon, means fawns following their mothers through the streets of our small town. The local deer are, sadly, a contentious issue. Many residents resent their appetites for rose bushes and other flora. Others have accused deer of assault (typically a mother deer’s instinct to protect her fawn). But a major reason we …

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Book Review: Phoenix Zones by Hope Ferdowsian

Phoenix Zones: Where Strength Is Born and Resilience Lives by Hope Ferdowsian, MD, is among the many compassionate, powerful, inspiring books the world needs now. This slender book about trauma and healing portrays the lives of human and nonhuman animals from myriad parts of the world, examining the ways in which suffering—and healing—is universal across  borders …

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Book review: PROTEST KITCHEN by Carol J. Adams and Virginia Messina

Carol J. Adams, best known for her groundbreaking book The Sexual Politics of Meat, has teamed up with dietician Virginia Messina to create Protest Kitchen: Fight Injustice, Save the Planet, and Fuel Your Resistance One Meal at a Time, an inspiring guide for all who care about social justice, animal rights, and our planet.  With …

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Interview with BARN 8 author Deb Olin Unferth

Thanks so much to Deb Olin Unferth for chatting with us about her new novel, Barn 8, released last month from Graywolf Press. EcoLit Books: For your article “Cage Wars,” published by Harper’s in 2014, your research included visiting a commercial egg farm and watching unedited footage of undercover investigations. A lot of information portrayed in the article, …

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Book Review: Deb Olin Unferth’s BARN 8

It’s rare to find a novel whose plot centers around animal rescue, and rarer still to encounter one that is deftly written and gets it (mostly) right—which is among the many reasons Deb Olin Unferth’s Barn 8 is both a terrific and important book.  Barn 8 is not necessarily an animal-rights novel—the animals themselves come second to many …

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New Podcast: John Yunker joins The Afterword for a Chat About Environmental Stories

Author and EcoLit Books co-founder John Yunker joined guest Joelle Teachey, executive director of Trees Upstate, for a podcast focused on environmental literature. The Afterword is a podcast devoted to the “future of words” and is hosted by Amy Bowling and Holland Webb. You can listen to it here. You can also subscribe via iTunes.

What I’m reading in the New York Times

A few articles that I bookmarked in the Times over the past two weeks… How Do the New Plant-Based Burgers Stack Up? We Taste-Tested Them I agree that Impossible Burgers and Beyond Meat rank highest, though I’ve also been a long-time fan of Field Roast. But I always find it odd when taste tests include …

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Book Review: The Humane Gardener

What in the world could be inhumane about gardening? Plenty, it turns out, thanks to this beautifully produced and incredibly important book by Nancy Lawson: The Humane Gardener: Nurturing a Backyard Habitat for Wildlife. The Humane Gardener makes a persuasive case for rethinking conventional knowledge about what a garden or yard should look like and …

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What We’re Reading: September 2019

Midge Raymond This opinion piece in The Guardian shows in great detail why eating animals and animal products needs to be part of the conversation about climate change.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/08/ipcc-land-climate-report-carbon-cost-meat-dairy This opinion piece in the New York Times uses both wit and wisdom to discuss why “vegans are irrefutably on the right side of history.” https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/28/opinion/vegan-food.html Jacki …

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“Penguins are in trouble”

This from a sobering research report published last week by some of the world’s leading experts on penguins. The report notes that “more than half of the world’s 18 penguin species are declining.” The three species most in danger are: African penguin Galápagos penguin Yellow-eyed penguin (seen below in New Zealand) The report notes that …

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The Emergence of Vegan Studies: Q & A with Laura Wright, author of Through a Vegan Studies Lens

Laura Wright is a professor of English at Western Carolina University.  In 2015, she introduced the field of Vegan Studies through her book The Vegan Studies Project: Food, Animals, and Gender in the Age of Terror (University of Georgia Press).  She followed this book up in 2019 with Through a Vegan Studies Lens (University of …

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Notes from the ASLE Conference in Davis, California

ASLE is the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment. Every other year, the organization hosts a conference; this year it was at the University of California at Davis, and we drove down to participate. I’m told there were more than 1,200 attendees, a conference record, and a sign that environmental literature is …

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