By Simmons Buntin. Trinity University Press, 2025.

In Satellite, Simmons Buntin delves into the idea of belonging—in place, time, family, and community—in 16 essays written over nearly two decades. The pieces range throughout the Desert Southwest, on both sides of the U.S.-Mexico border, and as far afield as Mount Saint Helens, Montana, Vermont, Sweden, and even the moon (if a telescope atop Kitt Peak counts). Buntin examines the beauty and challenges of raising a family and creating more sustainable communities in the Sonoran Desert—and, more broadly, in any of America’s diverse cultural and ecological landscapes.

Simmons Buntin is the author of Satellite: Essays on Fatherhood and Home, Near and Far; a collection of sustainable community case studies titled Unsprawl: Remixing Spaces as Places; and two books of poetry, Bloom and Riverfall. He’s also the co-editor of Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy. He is the founding editor-in-chief of Terrain.org and president of the nonprofit Terrain Publishing. Simmons lives in Tucson, Arizona, where he is the senior director of marketing and communications at the University of Arizona’s College of Information Science. He can also be found at simmonsbuntin.com or urbanwild.substack.com.