All the Powerful Invisible Things
All the Powerful Invisible Things

Author: Gretchen Legler

Publisher: Trinity University Press

Published: 2021-04-20

Total Pages: 193

ISBN-13: 1595349421

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All the Powerful Invisible Things is an eloquent memoir of self-discovery and a chronicle of outdoor life. Refusing “impoverished ideas of passion,” Gretchen Legler writes about the complexities of being a woman who fishes and hunts, as well as about the more intimate terrain of family and sexuality. The result is a unique literary confluence filled with the ineffable graces of the natural world. She writes: “I used to hate being a woman. When I was young, I believed I was a boy. Throughout college I never knew what it was like to touch a woman, to kiss a woman, to have a woman as a friend. All of my friends were men. I am thirty years old now, and I feel alone. I am not a man. Knowing this is like an earthquake. Just now all the lies are starting to unfold. I don’t blend in as well or as easily as I used to. I refuse to stay on either side of the line.” Like many women, Legler finds that her presence identifies the unmarked boundaries of where she is and is not welcome, learning when it is advantageous to pass as male and when it is better to disappear into the woods and trees around her. This contrasts sharply with her experience of nature as a source of spiritual sustenance, a space of unparalleled freedom where she can lose herself in something larger. Twenty-five years after it was first published, All the Powerful Invisible Things remains a highwater mark for women writing about the outdoors and is one of the few works to tackle the intricacies of gender identity and sexuality with transcendental aplomb.

Inside Out
Inside Out

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2008-01-01

Total Pages: 366

ISBN-13: 9401206171

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The incursions of women into areas from which they had been traditionally excluded, together with the literary representations of their attempts to negotiate, subvert and appropriate these forbidden spaces, is the underlying theme that unites this collection of essays. Here scholars from Australia, Greece, Great Britain, Spain, Switzerland and the United States reconsider the well-entrenched assumptions associated with the public/private distinction, working with the notions of public and private spheres while testing their currency and exploring their blurred edges. The essays cover and uncover a rich variety of spaces, from the slums and court-rooms of London to the American wilderness, from the Victorian drawing-room and sick-room to out of the ordinary places like Turkish baths and the trenches of the First World War. Where previous studies have tended to focus on a single aspect of women’s engagement with space, this edited book reveals a plethora of subtle and tenacious strategies found in a variety of discourses that include fiction, poetry, diaries, letters, essays and journalism. Inside Out goes beyond the early work on artistic explorations of gendered space to explore the breadth of the field and its theoretical implications.

Heart Shots
Heart Shots

Author: Mary Zeiss Stange

Publisher: Stackpole Books

Published: 2018-03-28

Total Pages: 395

ISBN-13: 0811767272

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“A heart shot is what every big game hunter hopes for,” Editor Mary Zeiss Stange explains in the introduction to Heart Shots, “that perfect shot placement, whether of bullet or arrow, which ensures a quick, humane kill. A heart shot is also what the best hunting writing has always aimed for—that certain image, or theme, or turn of phrase that strikes to the core of our flesh-and-blood humanity, piercing the tissue-thin membrane between life and death.” Hunting and writing about it have not commonly been thought of as women’s work, but today women are hunting and writing about it in unprecedented numbers. This collection of stories by 46 hunters who happen to be female shows us that in fact some women have always hunted, and some have written dazzling accounts of their experiences. What you’ll find in k to nature and basics and to express in narrative, image, and metaphor the complex meaning of being predator, such impulses are ageless and genderless. There are differences in the way women go about hunting and telling its story. Some are subtle and some are startling. In this marvelous collection a full range of writers from hard-edged realists to contemplative naturalists express the complex thought and emotion that constitute hunting with intelligence and insight. These women are aware of the fact that they are doing something distinctly out of the ordinary. And this is a book distinctly out of the ordinary as well, to be enjoyed, pondered, and savored by women and men alike, all who appreciate a good story well told. [Stories and essays written by Mary Jobe Akeley, Kim Barnes, Nellie Bennett, Durga Bernhard, Courtney Borden, and many more.]

America
America

Author: Fred Setterberg

Publisher: Travelers' Tales

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13: 9781885211286

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A portrait of the nation through tales of travelers who have traversed the breadth and depth of America the beautiful.

Now Write! Nonfiction
Now Write! Nonfiction

Author: Sherry Ellis

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2009-12-24

Total Pages: 281

ISBN-13: 1101162759

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An essential handbook for nonfiction writers, featuring the trusted personal writing exercises of today's masters of creative non-fiction, including Gay Talese, Reza Aslan, John Matteson, Tilar Mazzeo, and many more! Beginners and seasoned writers alike will relish the opportunity to use the top-notch writing exercises collected in Now Write! Nonfiction culled from the personal stashes of bestselling and critically-acclaimed nonfiction authors like legendary essayist Gay Talese (Thy Neighbor's Wife), New York Times-bestselling authors Ishmael Beah (A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier) Reza Aslan (No God but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam), and Tilar Mazzeo (The Widow Clicquot), 2008 Pulitzer Prize-winner John Matteson (Eden's Outcasts: The Story of Louisa May Alcott and Her Father), creative nonfiction icon Lee Gutkind (Creative Nonfiction magazine), and many other top memoirists, journalists, and teachers of creative nonfiction, these exercises offer fresh ideas for every facet of creative nonfiction writing, from pushing through writers block to organizing a story, capturing character to fine-tuning dialogue, injecting new life into a finished piece to starting a new work from scratch. Now Write! Nonfiction will take you out into the field with creative nonfiction's master practitioners: *Peek inside Gay Talese's mind, as he shares the "writer's road map" he used to organize information for his classic book Thy Neighbor's Wife and his seminal essay "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." *Learn from Reza Aslan why what you remember isn't as important as why you remember it the way you do *Explore the importance of cultural nuance in language with Ishmael Beah *Discover Lee Gutkind's simple trick, performed with a highlighter, that can help any writer identify whether their piece is truly showing action, or just telling An essential resource that will help writers of any level to hone their craft and get writing, Now WRite! Nonfiction offers over 80 quick, simple excersises trusted by top nonfiction writers to get their pen moving!

The ISLE Reader
The ISLE Reader

Author: Michael P. Branch

Publisher: University of Georgia Press

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 9780820325170

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This volume gathers nineteen of the most representative and defining essays from the journal ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment over the course of its first ten years. Following an introduction that traces the stages of ecocriticism's development, The ISLE Reader is organized into three sections, each of which reflects one of the general goals the journal has sought to accomplish. The section titled "Re-evaluations" provides new readings of familiar environmental writers and new environmental perspectives on authors or literary traditions not usually considered from a green perspective. The writings in "Reaching Out to Other Disciplines" promote cross-pollination among various disciplines and methodologies in the environmental arts and humanities. The writings in the final section, "New Theoretical and Practical Paradigms," are especially significant for the conceptual and methodological terrain they map. The ISLE Reader documents the state of research in ecocriticism and related interdisciplinary fields, provides a survey of the field, and points to new methodologies and possibilities for the future.

Woodsqueer
Woodsqueer

Author: Gretchen Legler

Publisher: Trinity University Press

Published: 2022-02-15

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 159534960X

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“Woodsqueer” is sometimes used to describe the mindset of a person who has taken to the wild for an extended period of time. Gretchen Legler is no stranger to life away from the rapid-fire pace of the twenty-first century, which can often lead to a kind of stir-craziness. Woodsqueer chronicles her experiences intentionally focusing on not just making a living but making a life—in this case, an agrarian one more in tune with the earth on eighty acres in backwoods Maine. Building a home with her partner, Ruth, on their farm means learning to live with solitude, endless trees, and the wild animals the couple come to welcome as family. Whether trying to outsmart their goats, calculating how much firewood they need for the winter, or bartering with neighbors for goods and services, they hone life skills brought with them (carpentry, tracking and hunting wild game) and other skills they learn along the way (animal husbandry, vegetable gardening, woodcutting). Legler’s story is at times humbling and grueling, but it is also amusing. A homage to agrarian American life echoing the back-to-the-land movement popularized in the mid-twentieth century, Woodsqueer reminds us of the benefits of living close to the land. Legler unapologetically considers what we have lost in America, in less than a century—individually and collectively—as a result of our urban, mass-produced, technology-driven lifestyles. Illustrated with rustic pen-and-ink illustrations, Woodsqueer shows the value of a solitary sojourn and both the pathway to and possibilities for making a sustainable, meaningful life on the land. The result, for Legler and her partner, is an evolution of their humanity as they become more physically, emotionally, and even spiritually connected to their land and each other in a complex ecosystem ruled by the changing seasons.

Sisters of the Earth
Sisters of the Earth

Author: Lorraine Anderson

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2003-12-09

Total Pages: 498

ISBN-13: 1400033217

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Sisters of the Earth is a stirring collection of women’s writing on nature: Nature as healer. Nature as delight. Nature as mother and sister. Nature as victim. Nature as companion and reminder of what is wild in us all. Here, among more than a hundred poets and prose writers, are Diane Ackerman on the opium of sunsets; Ursula K. Le Guin envisioning an alternative world in which human beings are not estranged from their planet; and Julia Butterfly Hill on weathering a fierce storm in the redwood tree where she lived for more than two years. Here, too, are poems, essays, stories, and journal entries by Emily Dickinson, Alice Walker, Terry Tempest Williams, Willa Cather, Gretel Erlich, Adrienne Rich, and others—each offering a vivid, eloquent response to the natural world. This second edition of Sisters of the Earth is fully revised and updated with a new preface and nearly fifty new pieces, including new contributions by Louise Erdrich, Pam Houston, Zora Neale Hurston, Starhawk, Joy Williams, Kathleen Norris, Rita Dove, and Barbara Kingsolver.

Let There Be Night
Let There Be Night

Author: Paul Bogard

Publisher: University of Nevada Press

Published: 2008-08-18

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 0874179270

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The development of the modern world has brought with it rampant light pollution, destroying the ancient mystery of night and exacting a terrible price--wasted energy, damage to human health, and the sometimes fatal interruption of the life patterns of many species of wildlife. In Let There Be Night, twenty-nine writers, scientists, poets, and scholars share their personal experiences of night and help us to understand what we miss when dark skies and nocturnal wildness vanish. They also propose ways by which we might restore the beneficence of true night skies to our cities and our culture. Let There Be Night is an engaging examination, both intimate and enlightening, of a precious aspect of the natural world. The diverse voices and perceptions gathered here provide a statement of hope that he ancient magic of night can be returned to our lives.

When Everything Beyond the Walls Is Wild
When Everything Beyond the Walls Is Wild

Author: Lilace Mellin Guignard

Publisher: Texas A&M University Press

Published: 2019-03-26

Total Pages: 302

ISBN-13: 1623497647

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In When Everything Beyond the Walls Is Wild, Lilace Mellin Guignard draws from emblematic moments and relationships in her own life to explore issues of gender, recreation, and environmental conservation. Born into a suburban family, Guignard wanted to get up close and personal with iconic American landscapes, but social pressures and cautionary tales told her that these spaces were not meant for her as a woman. Reflecting on the ways our culture socializes women to remain indoors, Guignard shares her own struggles with finding her place outdoors. Refusing to stay indoors and “safe,” Guignard drove cross-country with her dog, worked as a river guide, and set out to climb Mount Whitney. She recounts navigating outdoor interactions with male friends and strangers that range from wonderful to awkward to frightening. Now that she is settled with her own family, Guignard writes about how it is still more difficult for women than men to prioritize outdoor recreation time. These stories expose how cultural messages about women shape their experiences and interactions when backpacking, paddling, rock climbing, and bicycling. They broaden readers’ notions of what adventure is, what places are considered wild and worth our care, and what types of people enjoy the outdoors. Drawing upon the art of the memoir—and informed by analysis from women’s studies and ecological literature—Guignard makes an impassioned case for why women and marginalized members of society should have the opportunity to experience nature. The self-reliance and connection with the natural world that outdoor recreation fosters are qualities we all need in order to do the work required by the environmental challenges ahead.