At a biological field station in the Chiricahua Mountains of southeast Arizona — towering canyons and clear-running creeks — a Stanford scientist attending a poetry workshop volunteered to get up for an evening reading. He’d spent the week studying with poet Sherwin Bitsui in an environmental writing program put on by Orion magazine, using specimen […]
On Writing
I’d just filled a wine bottle with Malbec and was handing it to a neighbor who was operating the manual corking machine when it occurred to me that wine making is a lot like book writing. I was at the tail end of a whirlwind tour to promote my new book, and I was home […]
Dear readers of Last Word on Nothing: This will be my last post for some time, as I need to buckle down and focus on a book I am writing. The book is about the tricky ethics of our relationships with nonhuman animals in a world massively influenced by human activity. I will miss writing […]
One of the finest editors I’ve ever known has died, and I’m heartbroken. David Corcoran was my first editor at the New York Times, but over the 12 years that I knew him he also became an advocate and a friend. David was kind and supportive like a good dad. His tenor let me know […]
By now you’ve probably heard about author Naomi Wolf’s fateful radio interview on the BBC. Perhaps you’ve heard the interview itself, though if not, you might want to skip it—especially if you’re a writer who traffics in facts and has ever had to cite one. It’s gruesome listening. Wolf was publicizing her book about the […]
When a society uses a suite of technologies that a single adult can master in his or her lifetime—building a house from scratch, farming, spinning cotton, making medicines, having babies, hunting, fishing, singing and dancing—then it is possible to attain a high level of competency in nearly every major task an adult may be called […]
Oh spring — a time for renewal. I’m finally (mostly) home from book tour, and I’ve been taking a little break from the grind to breathe in and focus my attention on things that replenish my creative energy and make me feel connected and fully present in my place. Perhaps the most soul-nourishing thing I’ve […]
I think I’m in the primitive garden. That’s the name of this garden, a weird fairy hollow situated near the border of the weird fairy artist ranch where I’m staying in Tucson. I am looking north. I can tell because the sun is at my back. In front of me there is a small trapezoidal […]
