Environmental storytelling; how our feelings (internal worlds!) shape our environments (the external one!); hurdles and doubts in the creative process; balancing anxieties and fears with hope and joy; cultivating community; the writing life in general.
Rebecca Solnit writes that she first fell in love with reading because it offered her tunnels to other lives--and then, once she started publishing, she realized wonderful people came through those tunnels to her. I know exactly what she means. I am a writer in part because of how much I enjoy being in conversation both on and off the page. Whether or not you believe in astrology, know that I am a weigh-both-sides Libra who loves to circle an issue or question and think it through from all corners. I love talking with passionate people of all stripes, whether readers, writers, environmental thinkers, or just people with a strong sense of inquiry.
No need to come in with an agenda--I'm happy for a conversation to spiral and ping-pong back and forth as we find our stride.
“This is one of those stories that begins with a female body. Hers was crumpled, roadside, in the ash-colored slush between asphalt and snowbank.”
So begins Erica Berry’s kaleidoscopic exploration of wolves, both real and symbolic. At the center of this lyrical inquiry is the legendary OR-7, who roams away from his familial pack in northeastern Oregon. While charting OR-7’s record-breaking journey out of the Wallowa Mountains, Erica simultaneously details her own coming-of-age as she moves away from home and wrestles with inherited beliefs about fear, danger, femininity, and the body.
“I DEVOURED EVERY STARTLING, LYRICAL, HAUNTING PAGE OF WOLFISH. A STUNNING ACHIEVEMENT, IT LEFT ME FEELING LIKE ONE OF THE PACK.”
— Elizabeth Rush, author of Rising, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize