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"A Wake Up Call for Ecosystem and Planet"

4/15/2021

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Mountain Journal's review (click on the image) of To Reach the Spring begins with an Editor's Note:
With Earth Day 2021 upon us, Nathaniel Popkin's new book is certain to stir reflection and discussion. As reviewer Charlie Quimby notes, it is not a jeremiad nor preachy—quite the opposite. It is [a] short read intended to make conscious the unconscious things we as human societies are doing in consuming the nature that sustains us, and, at this rate, it leads to only one possible outcome.
The review continues with passages like this:
To Reach the Spring tackles the big question of how humans can possibly face together an existential threat in which we are both victims and perpetrators. It is less a book about ecology than a human critique of the systems that have given us unimaginable freedom to consume the planet that sustains life.
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The book’s 146 pages could easily be read in a day. I took much longer to finish, not because it was slow going but because each of its four chapters demanded reflection. I found myself underlining and starring the text on a substantial number of pages, then waited until I felt alert and committed enough to attend closely to the summing up.
Charlie Quimby is a novelist with deep affinity for Western American landscapes, which (as Wallace Stegner warned us long ago) are among the most threatened by human actions. His essay gives an artful and appreciative overview of the book and of the crisis it addresses.

And, by the way, To Reach the Spring just won the Firebird Book Award from Speak Up Talk Radio.

#ClimateCrisis #ClimateChange #ClimateJustice #GlobalWarming
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More Author Updates

3/30/2021

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Our previous and forthcoming authors have been busy!
  • The anthology The Best Short Stories of Philadelphia 2020, forthcoming from Toho Publishing, includes three members of the Working Writers Group, which runs our press: Ann de Forest, who is editing a book on walking that we'll formally announce soon; Debra Leigh Scott; and Sam Gridley, whose novel we published a few years ago.
  • Ann's poem "Ammonites" has just appeared in Cleaver Magazine.
  • In a recent blog post, Sam offers a somewhat whimsical explanation of why people should preorder his novella The Bourgeois Anarchist for use as a household weapon.
​Happy spring, everyone!
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Author Updates

3/25/2021

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Nathaniel Popkin and Andri Magnason in conversation at AWP, 3/6/21
NATHANIEL POPKIN:
New archived discussions about the climate crisis in connection with Nathaniel's book To Reach the Spring:
  • 2/6/21: Interview with Norman B. on Life Elsewhere radio, show 410.
  • 2/18/21: Interview on This Climate Podcast from Indiana University's Environmental Resilience Institute and IU Media School. Available on Spotify.​​
  • 3/6/21: Virtual discussion with Andri Snær Magnason, one of Iceland's most noted writers, about his forthcoming book about the climate crisis, On Time and Water (trans. Lytton Smith). Part of the Saturday Community Bookfair at the AWP virtual conference; archived on Vimeo.
  • 3/14/21: Interview on Wild Connection: The Podcast, focusing on "ecological grief."
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SAM GRIDLEY:
Sam, the author of our book The Shame of What We Are, has a novella coming out from Finishing Line Press: The Bourgeois Anarchist, now available for preorder.
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Five Stars for TO REACH THE SPRING

3/8/2021

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A five-star Amazon review of To Reach the Spring:
What is life worth?
Popkin's cri de coeur. "To Reach the Spring" speaks to, follows up with, and updates Rachel Carson's "Silent Spring" but speaks as well to Primo Levi, James Baldwin and to many more. It is a philosophical rumination on choice, obligation, and judgment. It asks: what is a life worth? It tells us we are all victim and victimizer. It uses the Holocaust as a touchpoint to reflect on the environmental apocalypse we are living through (perhaps dangerously -- the differences outweigh the similarities, but human behavior here is the key -- when we are of the group causing harm we believe we are in the right, OR don't see a path of resistance, OR don't care enough or are too consumed by other things both trivial and important). The essays also comprise something of a memoir, whereby Popkin reaches into his childhood and young adulthood -- the story of our planet's plight, after all, is the story of our lives, of how we have learned what to value and how to make change possible. Indeed, this short but crucial book is ultimately a book of hope, despite the grim take on our humanity. It is partially framed as a letter to hypothetical grandchildren (shades of Baldwin writing to his - real - nephew) which implies that there will indeed be grandchildren around to read it. While the book to his grandchildren yet to be is in part an apology, it also is a dream. That the spring IS within our reach. We just have to be brave. "To Reach the Spring" should be up there in the pantheon with "Silent Spring." Not because of its literary merit (which it has in spades, mind you) but for its challenge to make a better world through our individual and collective choices.
(Review by Kevin M. Feinberg)
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AWP 2021!

3/1/2021

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The AWP Conference is going virtual this year, and the legion of folks who've been working on the digital platform have our deep appreciation. We've registered only for the Saturday Community Bookfair, March 6, and even for this minimal commitment the setup has been time-consuming. Nevertheless, we're happy to report that the arrangements below are more or less final, subject to digital glitches. We'll be sharing our virtual exhibit space with our friends at Hidden River Arts. Note that times are given for two time zones, Central and Eastern.

  • 10:00 to 11:00 a.m. Central/11:00 a.m. to noon Eastern:
    Meet & Greet with Nathaniel Popkin, author of TO REACH THE SPRING. As a special guest, Nathaniel has invited Andri Magnason, one of Iceland's best-loved authors. Andri is the author of ON TIME AND WATER, a book of "narrative nonfiction" about the climate crisis. It's become a bestseller in Iceland, and an English translation is forthcoming this month from Open Letter. This conversation should be fascinating.
  • 12:00 noon to 1:00 p.m. Central/1:00 to 2:00 p.m. Eastern: 
    Meet & Greet with Justine Dymond, whose book THE EMIGRANT AND OTHER STORIES has won the Eludia Award from Hidden River Arts. The Eludia series publishes the first book-length fiction from women writers age 40 or above. The series has been extraordinary so far, and Justine's book, due out later this spring, is no exception. It focuses on "characters who experience life as foreigners, whether in their own countries or not." Very appropriate for this conference where we'll all feel like foreigners in Zoomland.
  • 2:30 to 5:00 p.m. Central/3:30 to 6:00 p.m. Eastern: Hours when we will be hanging out to talk with anyone who comes for a virtual visit. Please bring snacks.

These events are open only to people registered for the conference. However, in honor of AWP, we're offering three of our recent books at a 20% discount if you order direct from our distributor. Follow the links below and at checkout, in the line that says Enter Promo Code,  type AWP20.

Nathaniel Popkin, TO REACH THE SPRING
Nathaniel Popkin, EVERYTHING IS BORROWED
Mark Lyons, HOMING: A MEMOIR
These discounts will be available to anyone from 3/3 through 3/9. Enjoy!

Update: Navigating the AWP site has been confusing for many. We will be in the Saturday Community Bookfair, which, as the name suggests, is on Saturday only. The link shown below will go live only on Saturday. You have to be registered for the conference for access. Be sure to have an adult beverage on hand for consolation if you get lost.
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Pandemics and Climate Change

2/2/2021

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"Pandemics are coming with greater rapidity ... because the Earth is warming." It could hardly be stated more directly.

In his latest interview, on the Give & Take podcast with Scott Jones, Nathaniel Popkin directly connects the current pandemic with the subject of his new book, To Reach the Spring: From Complicity to Consciousness in the Age of Eco-Crisis.

"Each of us is responsible [for the climate crisis]. But yet the responsibility is a collective one," he continues. So how do we THINK about the problem? To engage in this conversation, give the podcast a listen or check out the book itself.

#pandemic #COVID #ClimateChange #ClimateCrisis #Global Warming
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Our First Audiobook!

1/15/2021

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Now available as an audiobook: TO REACH THE SPRING, Nathaniel Popkin's "clarifying, bracing, and ultimately transformative" book on the climate crisis. Narrated by the author himself, it's a great listen. Here are the links for Audible and Amazon:

Audible 
Amazon

The book is also available on iTunes. Search by author or title.

#climatechange #climatecrisis #climatejustice #globalwarming
#audiobooks
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Stand Up! for the Earth

1/12/2021

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"I know that I am complicit," says Nathaniel Popkin in the new episode of the podcast Stand Up! with Pete Dominick. "It's truly a weight on me."

He's talking, of course, of the responsibility all of us bear for the climate crisis, the subject of his book TO REACH THE SPRING. And he relates this long-term danger to our present experience with the pandemic.

Nathaniel's portion begins at 1:17:29. Some other snippets:
  • "The heating of the earth is going to create more pandemic diseases."
  • "You can see the ways in which the male ego gets in the way of making policy."
  • "I think it's possible for us to get it … that we're in this together."
  • "Ordering from Uber Eats a bag of fries - we're all complicit.… [Yet] most human beings are part of the capital system as victims."
  • "We have known, more than previous generations … in detail … that we are the killer here [of the Earth], also that we are the victim.… And yet we go on, sort of blindly."
  • "This is a book about thinking about how to think about this issue."

#climatecrisis #climatechange #globalwarming #COVID
@standupwithpetedominick
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"We are at stake to one another"

1/5/2021

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In a just-published Q&A with Jared Jackson of The PEN Ten (PEN America's interview series), Nathaniel Popkin reveals some of the thinking behind his book To Reach the Spring: From Complicity to Consciousness in the Age of Eco-Crisis. Here's an excerpt:
[Q:] In the book, you highlight our complicity and potential for apathy, going on to write, “Not facing known and well-understood acts of destruction may be the moral failure of our time.” I turn one of your opening questions back to you. In face of the climate crisis, what is life worth?

[A:] Very clearly, we’ve allowed the market, the system of global capitalism, to establish the metrics for answering this question. But it doesn’t have to be that way, does it? And furthermore, what we take the question to mean—what is a human life worth?—can be challenged and changed. For all life and lives are connected. As biologists are increasingly coming to understand, beings spawn, grow, evolve, and adapt together in complicated webs of life and not—as we like to imagine—as discrete individuals. We are at stake to one another. Let us, then, reconfigure our approach to the question, “What is life worth?” For what do we mean by life?
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Year-End Roundup

12/22/2020

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For us, the main event of 2020 was the publication of Nathaniel Popkin's deeply thoughtful book-length essay on the climate crisis: TO REACH THE SPRING.

In the few weeks since the book launched, he's done a variety of interviews. If you like moving images, here are three video appearances available online:

Grid Magazine video interview

Walden Woods Project, Zoom discussion with Gail Straub:

The Jefferson Exchange radio show

Our favorite, though, remains the static, words-only interview on the blog of Deborah Kalb. It's really one of the best Q&As we've ever read.

#climatecrisis #climatechange #climateaction #globalwarming

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