Last month, I visited the extraordinary natural history collection at the University of Massachusetts. Hidden in the depths of Morrill Science Center, it’s not easily accessible to public view, and I was shown around by generous and knowledgeable biologist & curator Kate Doyle. Kate alerted me to a sumptuous art exhibition now on display at …
Read more “The beauty of collections”
Clearstories, my poetry/image collaboration with photographer Stephen Petegorsky, is showing at R. Michelson Galleries in Northampton, MA this month. The exhibition, which features 17 of the pairs, was written up in a fine article by Steve Pfarrar in the Daily Hampshire Gazette. We also were interviewed on WHMP’s Talk the Talk along with gallery manager …
Read more “Clearstories at R. Michelson Galleries”
My latest journalistic piece came out in The Shoestring last month. The piece explores the conflict between the need to produce green energy in Massachusetts, and the pressure of solar development on lands we’d prefer to conserve, like forests and farmlands. What happens when large-scale, for-profit solar threatens green space? Are the local citizens challenging …
Read more “The Forest and the Trees”
I was delighted to ring in the New Year with a published poem in the storied magazine Scientific American. The poem is part of my Clearstories collaboration with photographer Stephen Petegorsky. In “Baby Crocodile,” I drew on a memory of an encounter with a Florida alligator (a species of crocodilian). These reptiles seem cold and …
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My middle grade novel, The Monarchs of Winghaven, has a launch date! Sammie and Bram, my dauntless bird- and butterfly-watching protagonists, will meet the world on May 14, 2024. Illustrations by Naila Moreira, THE MONARCHS OF WINGHAVEN
I’ve been collaborating with photographer Stephen Petegorsky on a set of paired poems and photos, titled Clearstories. An excerpt from the project has now been published as an online chapbook at Terrain.org: Clearstories The project explores animal specimens that have been cleared and stained, a process in which they are treated with an enzyme to …
I somehow didn’t post this essay that I wrote based on my time as artist in residence at the Isles of Shoals. Published by the wonderful nature-writing magazine Terrain.org, it centers on a necropsy of a seal pup that died from entanglement in ‘ghost gear,’ or a lost fishing net. With the seal’s body as …
Read more “The Reaper of the Sea”
I have some thrilling news, which is that my middle-grade novel, THE MONARCHS OF WINGHAVEN, will be published by Walker Books US in the spring of 2022: I’m so happy to have this opportunity to put a book into the world about a theme dear to my heart: a young person’s bond with nature. As …
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Despite wintry weather chewing at my edges I’ve spent plenty of time outdoors roaming the Pioneer Valley in the last few months. In late January, UMass geoscientist Julie Brigham-Grette took me for a McPhee-style gander through regional geology: Right now, we’re turning down a squelchy, pitted dirt road in the back fields of Sunderland. Minutes …
Read more “Roaming the Valley – ancient lakes, frogs, and sand volcanoes”
I’ve been slow to post my latest columns for the Daily Hampshire Gazette, so here’s a slug of them. Unsurprisingly, they all center on a similar theme – the way our world is heating, burning, every day hotter to the touch and to the thought. It’s burning in real ways, like my article on the …