The Orion Grassroots Network welcomed its newest intern staffer, Anushka Peres, this month (pictured above with Jon Denn, director of nearby Network member groups Trinity Conference Center and Counting Prayers).

Anushka comes to us with experience gained from stints with a variety of grassroots environmental groups, has a recent degree from Marlboro College in Vermont, and even ‘got on the bus’ with Network member group Audubon Expedition Institute in the southwest and Alaska. So she obviously fits in very well already, not least of which because she’s also an accomplished photographer.

“Anyway, yesterday in an attempt to find some humane aspect to this godforsaken place I went to the local farmer’s market, where the chocolate
seller (best candy bar I ever ate, actually) was reading the new Orion.  And then today, I did a pre-interview with the NPR show Living on Earth, and the
producer said she was a fan of Orion!  So there you go, Orion has the artisan gourmands and the ecology public radio show audience wrapped up.
But you knew that, already, didn’t you?”

• In March, Executive Director Chip Blake gave a talk at the Southern Environmental Law Center on the relationship between literature and activism, as part of the Virginia Festival of the Book.

• In April, Executive Editor Hal Clifford took part in a panel at the annual conference of the American Society of Journalists and Authors in New York City

• In April, Editor Jennifer Sahn served on a roundtable discussion at the Juniper Literary Festival in Amherst, Massachusetts

• Jennifer was a featured speaker at the Environmental Writers’ Conference in Honor of Rachel Carson in Boothbay Harbor, Maine in June

• In early June Hal gave a talk on sustainability to 170 employees of the Olympus Surgical & Industrial America in New Jersey (see fuller description in an earlier post)

• Chip was the keynote speaker at the Environmental Leadership Program’s Celebration of Leadership in June.

• and today Picture Editor Jason Houston is in New York, speaking at a gathering of recent graduates of the International Center for Photography.

In upcoming staff travels, Jennifer will be a presenter at the Kentucky Womens Writers Conference in September; In October, Managing Editor Tara Miner will attend the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists in Roanoke, Virginia; Jason will be a panelist at the Art + Environment Conference at the Nevada Museum of Art in October; and Chip will be the keynote speaker at Confluence: A Celebration of Reading and Writing in Moab, Utah, in October.

Editor Jen Sahn writes:

It was another fabulous year at Wildbranch, the writing workshop cosponsored by Orion and Sterling College. Faculty members David Abram, Janisse Ray, Scott Russell Sanders, and Sandra Steingraber drew an appealing group of applicants, half of whom were accepted to attend the workshop in June. The weather in Craftsbury Common, Vermont, was brisk this year, but it didn’t put much of a damper on the morning bird walks. It was a busy week, as usual, with morning class, afternoon discussions, wine and beer social hours, locally sourced meals, and, of course, homework. Some excellent writing was shared by faculty at a Wednesday evening reading, and by students on Friday afternoon. It is a delight for the editors of Orion to play a role in making this workshop happen. We look forward to it every year.

Details for the 2009 workshop will be announced in autumn.

The 2008 season is off to a slow start—not a lot of birds around yet—but it’s been cool and migration seems to be running a little late. We’re counting on it to heat up a bit.

Left to right: Great Barrington resident Elaine Radiss, OGN intern Silas Branson, and Orion development officer Chris Nye on an Orion bird walk, May 1, 2008.

W.W. Norton editor Alane Salierno Mason and 2008 Orion Book Award winner Diane Ackerman

Selection committee chairperson Kathleen Dean Moore

Ginger Strand and selection committee member David Rothenberg