Letters from the Ecotone invites readers into an open-hearted dialogue between friends--a scientist and a pastor. In a series of letters written during the pandemic, Lloyd and Nagy-Benson explore the realities of climate change from the perspectives of ecology and Christian theology. The authors seek common ground, where science and religion meet and share a vision of flourishing life on earth. At a time when the climate crisis is quickly emerging as an existential threat, this book charts a journey imbued with the insights of ecological science and the wisdom of the Christian tradition.

Letters from the Ecotone invites readers into an open-hearted dialogue between friends—a scientist and a pastor. In a series of letters written during the pandemic, Lloyd and Nagy-Benson explore the realities of climate change from the perspectives of ecology and Christian theology. The authors seek common ground, where science and religion meet and share a vision of flourishing life on earth. At a time when the climate crisis is quickly emerging as an existential threat, this book charts a journey imbued with the insights of ecological science and the wisdom of the Christian tradition.

The American essayist explores his boyhood in the town of Davenport, Iowa, outlining his quest to "make his life more than the sum of its worst moments in a chaotic household"--Cover flap.

Two writers and professors present 40 short pieces of fiction that serve as humorous counterfeit texts, including a personal ad from Ron Carlson, a parking department complaint from Amy Hempel, and a list of works cited from Rick Moody.

Winner of the PEN/Hemingway Award * A National Bestseller “An exceptional story collection.” —New York Times Book Review The well-intentioned protagonists of Brief Encounters with Che Guevera—including a disillusioned NGO worker, the wife of a special operations officer, and an obssessed ornithologist—are caught, to both disastrous and hilarious effect, in the maelstrom of political and social upheaval surrounding them. With masterful pacing and a robust sense of the absurd, each story is a self-contained adventure, steeped in the heady mix of tragedy and danger, excitement and hope, that characterizes countries in transition. An intelligent and keenly observed collection, Brief Encounters with Che Guevera marks the arrival of a striking and resonant new voice that speaks adeptly to the intimate connection between the foreign, the familiar, and the inescapably human.

In this extraordinary novel in letters, an Indian immigrant girl in New York City and a Kentucky coal miner's son find strength and perspective by sharing their true selves across the miles. Meena and River have a lot in common: fathers forced to work away from home to make ends meet, grandmothers who mean the world to them, and faithful dogs. But Meena is an Indian immigrant girl living in New York City’s Chinatown, while River is a Kentucky coal miner’s son. As Meena’s family studies for citizenship exams and River’s town faces devastating mountaintop removal, this unlikely pair become pen pals, sharing thoughts and, as their camaraderie deepens, discovering common ground in their disparate experiences. With honesty and humor, Meena and River bridge the miles between them, creating a friendship that inspires bravery and defeats cultural misconceptions. Narrated in two voices, each voice distinctly articulated by a separate gifted author, this chronicle of two lives powerfully conveys the great value of being and having a friend and the joys of opening our lives to others who live beneath the same sun.

The 51 papers in this proceedings include an introductory keynote paper on ecotones and hybrid zones and a final paper describing the mid-symposium field trip as well as collections of papers on ecotones and hybrid zones (15), population biology (6), community ecology (19), and community rehabilitation and restoration (9). All of the papers focus on wildland shrub ecosystems; 14 of the papers deal with one aspect or another of sagebrush (subgenus Tridentatae of Artemisia) ecosystems. The field trip consisted of descriptions of biology, ecology, and geology of a big sagebrush (Artemisia tridentata) hybrid zone between two subspecies (A. tridentata ssp. tridentata and A. t. ssp. vaseyana) in Salt Creek Canyon, Wasatch Mountains, Uinta National Forest, Utah, and the ecotonal or clinal vegetation gradient of the Great Basin Experimental Range, Manti-La Sal National Forest, Utah, together with its historical significance. The papers were presented at the 10th Wildland Shrub Symposium: Shrubland Ecotones, at Snow College, Ephraim, UT, August 12-14, 1998.

Mark Doty's prose has been hailed as "tempered and tough, sorrowing and serene" (The New York Times Book Review) and "achingly beautiful" (The Boston Globe). In Still Life with Oysters and Lemon he offers a stunning exploration of our attachment to ordinary things-how we invest objects with human store, and why.

In her first memoir, award-winning novelist Yiyun Li offers a journey of recovery through literature: a letter from a writer to like-minded readers. “A meditation on the fact that literature itself lives and gives life.”—Marilynne Robinson, author of Gilead “What a long way it is from one life to another, yet why write if not for that distance?” Startlingly original and shining with quiet wisdom, this is a luminous account of a life lived with books. Written over two years while the author battled suicidal depression, Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life is a painful and yet richly affirming examination of what makes life worth living. Yiyun Li grew up in China and has spent her adult life as an immigrant in a country not her own. She has been a scientist, an author, a mother, a daughter—and through it all she has been sustained by a profound connection with the writers and books she loves. From William Trevor and Katherine Mansfield to Søren Kierkegaard and Philip Larkin, Dear Friend is a journey through the deepest themes that bind these writers together. Interweaving personal experiences with a wide-ranging homage to her most cherished literary influences, Yiyun Li confronts the two most essential questions of her identity: Why write? And why live? Praise for Dear Friend, from My Life I Write to You in Your Life “Li has stared in the face of much that is beautiful and ugly and treacherous and illuminating—and from her experience she has produced a nourishing exploration of the will to live willfully.”—The Washington Post “Li’s transformation into a writer . . . is nothing short of astonishing.’”—The New York Times Book Review “An arrestingly lucid, intellectually vital series of contemplations on art, identity, and depression.”—The Boston Globe “Li is an exemplary storyteller and this account of her journey back to equilibrium, assisted by her closest companion, literature, is as powerful as any of her award-winning fiction, with the dark fixture of her Beijing past at its centre.”—Financial Times “Every writer is a reader first, and Dear Friend is Li’s haunted, luminous love letter to the words that shaped her. . . . Her own prose is both lovely and opaque, fitfully illuminating a radiant landscape of the personal and profound.”—Entertainment Weekly “Yiyun Li’s prose is lean and intense, and her ideas about books and writing are wholly original.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Georgia O’Keeffe mistrusted words. She claimed color as her language. Nevertheless, in the course of her long life, the great American painter wrote thousands of letters—more than two thousand survive between her and her husband, Alfred Stieglitz, alone. Jennifer Sinor’s Letters Like the Day honors O’Keeffe, her modernist landscapes, and, crucially, the value of letter writing. In the painter’s correspondence, we find an intimacy with words that is all her own. Taking her letters as a touchstone, Sinor experiments with the limits of language using the same aesthetic that drove O’Keeffe’s art. Through magnification, cropping, and juxtaposition—hallmarks of modernism—Sinor explores the larger truths at the center of O’Keeffe’s work: how we see, capture, and create. Letters Like the Day pursues the highest function of art—to take one’s medium to the edge and then push beyond.