credit: Ruth Sanders
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A recent radio interview focusing on A Conservationist Manifesto and A Private History of Awe, with Richard Brendan of WICR in Indianapolis, is posted here.
In January 2012, Indiana University Press will publish a volume of my selected essays entitled Earth Works, which will include twenty-one essays from my previous books and nine that have never appeared in book form.
Having greatly enjoyed the "Wilderness Plots" collaboration, I am undertaking two new projects with musicians. Composer Lauren Bernofsky is writing music for an operetta based on my novel The Engineer of Beasts, and I am writing the libretto. I am also writing a series of new short stories featuring my recurrent character Gordon Milk, for a series of shows I'll be performing in 2012 along with singer/songwriters Carrie Newcomer and Krista Detor, and writer Philip Gulley.
The Wooster Book Company has brought out a new edition of my children's book The Floating House, their fourth Sanders reprint.
My book Hunting for Hope has inspired an eight-week series of sermons and study groups at Countryside Community United Church of Christ in Omaha, Nebraska. The series began on September 25 and will continue into November. Each Sunday evening during that span, the website Darkwood Brew will broadcast an hour-long program at 6 p.m. EST centered around one of the sources of hope discussed in my book, and featuring a video interview with me. Quite apart from my role, the weekly on-line show is a vibrant and engaging mix of video, jazz, conversation, and religion. You will find a 15-minute excerpt from my interview here.
On June 24, the original cast of the "Wilderness Plots" show reunited for a performance on the campus of Indiana University. A film of the concert, made by our local PBS station, WTIU, premiered in the fall. You can see a preview of the film here. The DVD can be ordered here.
My essay "Breaking the Spell of Money" appeared in the July-August issue of Orion. You can read the essay here and join an on-line discussion here.
This summer and fallI completed what feels like a final draft of a novel. While characters in the novel contend with many of the issues that preoccupy me--the fate of Earth, the effects of war, our place in nature, the search for a spiritual path--they do so in ways that frequently surprise me.
I have been named winner of the 2011 Cecil Woods Award for Nonfiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. The award will be presented during the biennial Conference on Southern Literature, to be held in Chattanooga, Tennessee, April 14-16.
I was named the National Winner of the 2010 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, sponsored by the Indianapolis-Marion County Library Foundation. The award, based on lifetime achievement, includes a $10,000 prize, plus a grant of $2,500 to my local library. The announcement can be read here.
A Conservationist Manifesto was published in April 2009, on Earth Day, by Indiana University Press. The book addresses what I take to be the greatest challenge facing our society, which is to shift from a culture based on consumption to a culture based on caretaking. What would a truly sustainable economy look like? What responsibilities do we bear for the well-being of future generations? What responsibilities do we bear toward Earth’s millions of other species? In a time of ecological calamity and widespread human suffering, how should we imagine a good life? A Conservationist Manifesto seeks answers to these pressing questions, and more, in writing that’s impelled by a sense of place and a sense of hope.
You can view here a reading I gave from Conservationist, along with my discussion of the book and responses to audience questions.
The fall 2009 issue of Terrain.org carries a long, thoughtful review of Conservationist by editor Simmons Buntin, who moves outward from a discussion of the book to consider the challenges facing any effort to address serious environmental and social justice issues in the U.S. You'll find the review here.
An interview focusing on the book appears Grist.org, a website devoted to understanding our current predicament and envisioning the path toward a humane and durable way of life. You will find another recent interview here, and reviews of Conservationist here.
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I have returned to the writing of fiction in the past couple of years. The first fruits of this effort are "Heart Wood" (fall 2008 North American Review); "Four Winds" (winter 2009 Michigan Quarterly Review); "Mountain Weather" (spring 2009 Kenyon Review); "Waterfall" (winter 2009-2010 Image); "River Blessing" (spring 2010 Seattle Review); and "The Woman at the Grave" (Winter 2011 Kenyon Review).
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A Private History of Awe, published
in a cloth edition by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2006, and reprinted
in paperback in 2007, is now out of print. I have a few copies of the
original hardcover edition for sale. Inquire through the "Contact"
link if you would be interested in ordering a copy. Awe is
also availabled as an eBook. To read my short description of this book,
click here.
Four of my earlier books have been brought out in revised editions by
The Wooster Book Company—Wilderness Plots,
a collection of brief tales about the settlement of the Ohio Valley;
Warm as Wool, a storybook for children about
a pioneer family; and Aurora Means Dawn, another
children's storybook, this one about a family from Connecticut that
homesteads in the Ohio wilderness in 1800; and The Floating
House, a storybook about a family navigating a flatboat
down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh in 1815 and setting in southern
Indiana. Ask for any of these books at your local bookstore or contact
The Wooster Book Company online at www.woosterbook.com
or by phone at 800-982-6651. You will find brief descriptions of Wilderness
Plots, Warm as Wool, and Aurora Means Dawn here.
