In the early days of the pandemic, I found myself faced with a test of courage even more daunting than disinfecting groceries: peeing in the woods as a woman, and a very pregnant one, at that. As part of the research for my book, Curious Species: How Animals Made Natural History, I had contacted wildlife […]
Books
Hieronymous Bosch, the Temptation of St. Anthony. Via Wikimedia Commons. When I was a student studying literature, I kept seeing Christ allegories everywhere. I remember being assigned The Old Man and the Sea, one of many Hemingways I read that semester, and I remember my teacher asking what we thought the book was about. Answers […]
This is Part 2 of my interview with Jennifer Lunden, author of American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life. You can read Part 1 here. Kate: The main thing I took away from your early advice to me about book writing was “buy yourself […]
Jennifer Lunden is the author of the astounding new book American Breakdown: Our Ailing Nation, My Body’s Revolt, and the Nineteenth-Century Woman Who Brought Me Back to Life. She’s also a good friend. This is Part 1 of our conversation about work, exhaustion, and writing while ill. Kate: I know American Breakdown has been a […]
In 2005, the Australian ecophilosopher Glenn Albrecht coined a word that, in four mellifluous syllables, perfectly encapsulated the Anthropocene’s discontents: solastalgia, the emotion you experience when an environment you’ve long loved is catastrophically altered. Solastalgia, as Albrecht put it, is “a form of homesickness one experiences without leaving home” — it’s what you feel when […]
Madeline Ostrander is a passionate and talented science journalist and a good friend. Her must-read book At Home on an Unruly Planet: Finding Refuge on a Changed Earth is on shelves now. KATE: What initially sparked this project for you? MADELINE: Like most people who’ve been writing about climate change for a long time, I’ve […]
