The human relationship to nature and place is dynamic, and so is the writing that grows out of that fundamental connection. Two celebrated authors joined Orion‘s Editor Jennifer Sahn for a wide-ranging discussion of how the genre of nature writing is evolving.
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Here are some of the books Robert Macfarlane and Rebecca Solnit shared during the event:
Robert Macfarlane’s recommended books and articles:
Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams
Samuel Beckett, Waiting For Godot
David Gessner, Sick of Nature
Cormac McCarthy, The Road
Edward Abbey, The Monkey Wrench Gang
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Rebecca Solnit, Hope In The Dark
Rebecca Solnit, Savage Dreams
Caspar Henderson, The Book of Barely Imagined Beings
Callum Roberts, The Ocean of Life: How our Seas Are Changing
Tim Robinson, Stones of Aran: Pilgrimage and : Labyrinth
WG Sebald, The Rings of Saturn
Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain
Tim Dee, Four Fields
Gilbert White, A Natural History of Selborne
JA Baker, The Peregrine
JG Ballard, The Drowned World
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac and Other Writings on Ecology and Conservation, ed. Curt Meine, Library of America edition (2012)
…and articles:
No Heaven on Earth by Verlyn Klinkenborg, Bookforum, 2008
http://www.bookforum.com/inprint/015_03/2721
Super natural: the rise of the new nature writing, by Tim Dee, The National, Aug 22, 2013:
http://www.thenational.ae/arts-culture/books/super-natural-the-rise-of-the-new-nature-writing
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…and Rebecca Solnit’s ~
Thoreau, The Maine Woods; Walden; various essays
Mary Austen, Land of Little Rain
Willa Cather, Death Comes to the Archbishop & My Antonia
Peter Freuchen’s Arctic chronicles
Carobeth Laird, Encounters with an Angry God
George Stewart, Names on the Land
Aldo Leopold, A Sand County Almanac
Rachel Carson, Silent Spring
Susan Griffin, Woman and Nature: The Roaring Inside Her
Carolyn Merchant, The Death of Nature
Leslie Marmon Silko, Garden in the Dunes; Yellow Woman and a Beauty of the Spirit
Paul Shepard, Man in the Landscape; Nature and Madness
Charles Bowden, Blood Orchid
Louise Erdrich, The Last Report on the Miracle at Little No Horse
Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines (problematic but majestic)
Robyn Davidson, Tracks
TTW, Refuge (Leap?)
Jaime de Angulo’s writings on Native Californians
Jim Harrison, Dalva and The Shape of the Journey
John Haines, The Owl in the Mask of the Dreamer [poems]
Barry Lopez, Arctic Dreams
Wendell Berry, The Unsettling of America & Collected Poems
Richard K. Nelson’s writings on subarctic peoples
Piers Vitebsky, The Reindeer People
Gary Paul Nabhan, The Desert Smells Like Rain
Chip Ward, Canaries on the Rim
Jane Tompkins, West of Everything
Jill Fredston, Rowing to Latitude
Keith Basso, Wisdom Sits in Places
Hugh Brody, The Other Side of Eden
Jamaica Kincaid, A Small Place & garden essays
William Kittridge, Hole in the Sky & Having It All
Gary Snyder, The Practice of the Wild (and Tom Killian and Gary Snyder, Tamalpais Walking and The High Sierra of California)
Edward Abbey, Desert Solitaire
Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek
Kathleen Norris, Dakota: A Spiritual Geography
Bill McKibben, Eaarth, Deep Economy, Oil and Honey
Andrew C. Isenberg, The Destruction of the Bison
Michael Pollan, The Botany of Desire
Alan Weisman, The World Without Us
Rob MacFarlane, Mountains of the Mind & The Wild Places
Amy Leach, Things That Are
Excellent
Great podcast Jenifer. And, i am a big fan of David Gessner’s books, reviews and essays, but could never get my hands at Sick of Nature. Looking forward to reading it. Thanks.