All posts tagged: nature culture

Content that explores the relationship between nature and culture.

Lesser Short Nosed Fruit Bat Newborn

Yes, You can Leave The Hospital Without Naming Your Baby

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Some publication news: I’m super honoured to have a piece of creative nonfiction up at the latest issue of The Willowherb Review, a fantastic UK-based publication focused on providing a platform for nature writing from writers of colour. Some of you might recall that I also had another piece titled El Lugar de Los Sueños in Willowherb last year. Instead of another personal meditation, I wanted to embrace a completely opposite style. Whimsy fuels this slightly manic and ridiculous piece’s attempt to jam as many creatures into a single work (29 at last count). The conceit around names and naming is an attempt to honour those we share this planet with, those who have since passed, and those still in the process of discovering themselves through living. Here’s an excerpt: “…In the wild reaches even less care is taken in the naming process. This is more understandable given that there are so many mushrooms and so many weevils, and everything adjacent to groups or branching from clades deserves a station within life’s grand catalogue. Blurry-eyed taxonomists …

Life Lessons from the Odd and Ancient, The Hopper

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Pleased to have a new natural history essay up at The Hopper, an environmental literary magazine from Green Writers Press. The germ of this came about when I was piecing together an impromptu interpretive talk on living fossils and extinct creatures a few years back. Looking through horseshoe crabs, replica Megalodon teeth, and Cretaceous cypress needles, I was inspired by the many bizarre and under-appreciated organisms throughout Earth’s history, and felt compelled to share some of their stories through wordplay and lyrical prose: “If you’ve been feeling adrift on the sea of life lately, it might be best to seek guidance from an elder. You may wish to fish one out of the drink, like Captain Hendrik Goosen did one salty morning off the coast of South Africa in 1938, but be sure to verify its credentials first, as curator Marjorie Courtenay-Latimer did after spotting the creature’s four fleshy fins and puppy dog tail. Surprised at being consulted after four hundred million years, the coelacanth may be inclined to impart its accrued wisdom onto receptive devotees. …

Big Blue

Our Museum of the Future – Shenandoah

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Humbled and honoured to contribute a short story to the latest issue of Shenandoah Literary Magazine. I had the good fortune of working on “Our Museum of the Future” with editor Beth Staples, whose new vision for the venerable publication is one I find compelling: “…I consider it my job to privilege voices that don’t fit into that category, not just because it’s the right thing to do to counteract many years of established practice, but because reading is one of a very few ways we can jump into the mind of someone else.” The fundamental purpose of literature in Staples’ view is “to expand the reader’s sense of the world and their place in it. It should also be one of our goals for being alive: stepping into another person’s shoes and practicing radical empathy.” – Radical Rebirth, The Columns “Our Museum of the Future” grew out of the conceit that there exists a public space where words are showcased and curated in the same fashion as bones: “Welcome to a museum of words instead of bones. …

Cheung Chau Sunrise Orient

Lodestone, Tahoma Lit Review

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Excited to have a flash nonfiction piece published in the latest issue of Tahoma Literary Review, a great journal produced with “the aim of contributing to and sustaining a healthy literary ecosystem.” A description of the themes explored in this volume: “The 25 selections in our Fall/Winter issue describe dreams and omens; bodies in motion; how we deal with fear and grief; what we inherit and what we pass on. The stories, essays, and poems range in time and geography from the drought-ridden Midwestern plains of the 1870s to present-day Cheung Chau, Hong Kong.”  “Lodestone” takes place in that latter location, on the isle of Cheung Chau off the shores of Hong Kong, and revolves around a narrator’s return to a homeplace only to discover he is not the only one who has been drawn back. The featured photo may help you situate in the space, as it did for me when I finally sat down to write this piece. I feel especially fortunate to be in the company of some fantastic authors in this issue; …

6 Degrees of Interconnection

Six Degrees of Interconnection, Orion Magazine

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I’m pleased to have another short essay, “6 Degrees of Interconnection”, published in the latest Orion. Despite the title of the piece, I promise it is 100% Kevin Bacon free. Here’s a description on the rest of the issue: “In this issue, Robin Wall Kimmerer explores how language can affirm our kinship with the natural world, and John Landretti considers where the line lies between what is real and what is perceived. Other features include Jeremy Miller on an ecological experiment to create a wilderness area, and Anjali Vaidya on what it means to adapt in a post-colonial world. Also: poetry by Sierra Golden, Kimiko Hahn, Joan Naviyuk Kane, and James Thomas Stevens; plus Simen Johan’s lush photographs of wild animals and Jesse Chehak’s photographs of luminous water and ice in the North and West Atlantic.” I had the pleasure of attending the 2015 Bread Loaf Orion conference with Anjali Vaidya, so I’m naturally delighted to have my work featured alongside hers. Titled “Native or Invasive”, Vaidya’s essay navigates two tangled histories, one personal and …