Essays + stories

Review of Design With Nature Now, published Summer 2020, Orion. Published in 1969, Ian McHarg’s Design with Nature influenced generations of landscape architects and planners. This new book looks back and forward to how we live and build in the Anthropocene.

“Shapeshifting: a Love Story,” published Spring 2017, is a contemporary retelling of the Daphne myth that imagines another way of being that embraces our deep connection to nature. Immanence is a journal of applied mythology.

“Wonder,” published October 2016, is a response to Marie Howe’s miraculous poem, “Annunciation,” that explores the necessity for the poet’s voice in this time of unraveling and possibility. We need these invitations and gateways into other realities. Visit Dark Mountain’s site to learn more about them and subscribe.

“Song of the Chesapeake,” a piece about my love for the Bay and speculations about Water Walking. Published December, 2015 in Issue #3 of the beautiful online journal, Dark Matter: Women Witnessing.

“The Right Tool for the Job” – published November, 2015, in Dark Mountain Journal #8. I write about the pleasures of drawing in this themed issue on technology. To give you an idea of the beauty of this issue’s content, read this blog post. Or order a copy. And here’s a review that includes a generous mention.

“Subsidence” – published October, 2014, in Dark Mountain Journal #6. A brief, lyrical account of my encounter with a mountain stream in Wyoming.

---

Earthrise, a novel in progress

Radioactive sludge, flammable water, and dead chickens are inauspicious signs on an organic farm—especially one that supplies New York’s hottest new farm-to-table restaurant. Burned out and reeling from her father’s death, 28-year-old scientist Dr. Grace Evans has hit a wall. Her research in northeastern Pennsylvania in the early days of  fracking is sidelined by a volatile confrontation with the unscrupulous energy company that funds her research.

Grace is lonely, shut down, competitive and driven. When she finds a cooperative organic farm sequestered from the ruin of the industrialized world, she is pulled into another way of being: life-affirming and joyful, celebrating a creative partnership with nature.

The collision of the farm’s residents with the drillers brings illness, violence, and death, all of which Grace is powerless to prevent. She must forge a new way forward through creative engagement with enemies, the embrace of wildness, and returning home to the love and kinship of the wider community of life.

This novel is currently in progress.  Contact me if you have suggestions for agents or editors. Thanks!

---

Writing CV

Follow this link to older writing for magazines, websites, and conferences.