Member News

Taylor Brorby, ASLE member and author of the acclaimed Boys and Oil: Growing Up Gay in a Fractured Land, published a NYT guest op-ed on February 24, 2023, entitled “The Real Reason North Dakota Is Going After Books and Librarians.”

The guest essay focuses on “two pieces of legislation that may soon be signed into law in North Dakota would make it possible to restrict libraries and, in some cases, to imprison librarians.”

Please find below links to a *free access* review dossier on Environmental research and practice in Latin America, just out with the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, guest edited by Lisa Blackmore and Gisela Heffes.

It features essays on Indigenous arts in Brazil and site-specific arts practice that might be of particular relevance to members of ASLE, as well as other essays on plant and environmental thinking.

Treading Lightly on the Earth: New Directions in Latin American Environmental Research and Practice. Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies 31.1 ...

Literary Arts’ Oregon Book Awards for 2022 have awarded the Sarah Winnemucca Book Award for Creative Nonfiction to Allison Cobb’s Plastic: An Autobiography with the following citation from John Freeman:

Plastic degrades so slowly, Allison Cobb writes in her exquisitely made hybrid memoir, it is beyond material, it becomes instantly metaphorical. What does it mean to triumph over death in this way while also delivering it, her book asks. Visiting with albatrosses in Hawaii that choke to death on plastic toothbrushes, recalling her upbringing ...

Char Miller, director of environmental analysis and the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, is the principal investigator of a two-year project entitled “The People’s Archive: Los Angeles River Narratives, Counternarratives and Conversations.” This project was made possible with support from California Humanities, a non-profit partner of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and was awarded a $19,998 grant in December 2021.

Char Miller

“This is an extraordinary opportunity to capture the biotic and human stories about the region’s iconic river ...

How can ecological thinking and practice enable reparation? How can reparation for damages done be ecological? The YouTube channel Ecological Reparation discusses work engaged in remediating and repairing as well as claiming reparations for more than human ecologies. Videos explore different ways in which ecological thinking and practice may enable reparation, as well as how reparation for damages done could be ecological.

Participants start from diverse standpoints connecting the social sciences, environmental sciences and humanities, as well as critical theory, ...

Gisela Heffes and George Handley, recently elected co-presidents, are already bringing positive attention to ASLE. Gisela Heffes was recently featured in a piece from Rice University. In it, she emphasizes the importance of diversifying ASLE:

There’s never been anybody from Latin America in the presidency, I believe. One of our goals is to diversify and abandon monolingualism,” Heffes said. “It’s so important to emphasize the presence of Spanish in the United States, and I am extremely lucky that ASLE officers and members are very ...

Writing for Animals is designed to help writers become more effective advocates for animals. Using the book Writing for Animals: New perspectives for writers and instructors to educate and inspire as a text, we’ll examine the ways in which writers from myriad genres – fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and activist writing – handle the portrayal of animals in their work. The class is available periodically as a live program and throughout the year as a self-paced program. Instructors Midge Raymond and John Yunker are authors and ...

Virtual Poetry Retreat: Healing Ourselves and the Planet

On February 25-27, 2022, a Poets’ Retreat focused on healing ourselves and the planet will take place on Zoom. Explore the relationship between your writing practice and climate change in these gentle, restorative, and inspiring workshops with like-minded poets using their craft to promote change and right relationships between humans and the rest of Nature. The retreat includes three workshops, an exclusive poetry reading, peer writing groups, and an opportunity to read in the Authors ...

Scott Slovic, photo by Susan Bender

University of Oregon psychologist Paul Slovic and his son, University of Idaho Distinguished Professor of Environmental Humanities Scott Slovic, recently recorded a half-hour podcast for the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health series called Public Health On Call.

Their conversation focused on how psychology and literature help to explain public responses to COVID-19. Much of what Scott talked about concerns the environmental humanities in relation to the pandemic.

Listen via this link: The Arithmetic of Compassion: How Psychology ...