WAYS OF WALKING
Essays
Edited by Ann de Forest
Is walking a subversive act? For the authors of this book, it can be.
Ways of Walking brings together 26 writers who reflect on walks they have taken and what they have discovered along the way. Some walk across forbidden lines, violating laws to seek freedom. Some walk to bear witness to social injustice. Still others engage in a subtler subversion—violating the social norm of rapid, powered transportation to notice what fast travelers miss.
Through walking, these authors become more attuned to the places they move across, more attentive to intricate ecologies and layered histories—and more connected to themselves as well. Their small steps of rebellion lead to unexpected discoveries.
The volume includes writers of national renown such as Tom Zoellner, Ruth Knafo Setton, and Rahul Mehta, as well as contributors in other fields, from photography to music to archaeology.
The editor, Ann de Forest, is a California native who has been living and writing in fairly happy exile in Philadelphia for more than three decades. An expert in the urban landscape and the resonance of place, she is a contributing writer for HIDDEN CITY DAILY and editor of EXTANT MAGAZINE. Her poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in COAL HILL REVIEW, NOCTUA REVIEW, UNBROKEN, HOTEL AMERIKA, THE JOURNAL, PIF, CLEAVER MAGAZINE, and THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF PHILADELPHIA.
May 12, 2022
Links to Launch Events Here
Nonfiction, 264 pages
paperback / $18.95 / ISBN 978-1-7355585-2-3
ebook / $9.95 / ISBN 978-1-7355585-3-0
Essays
Edited by Ann de Forest
Is walking a subversive act? For the authors of this book, it can be.
Ways of Walking brings together 26 writers who reflect on walks they have taken and what they have discovered along the way. Some walk across forbidden lines, violating laws to seek freedom. Some walk to bear witness to social injustice. Still others engage in a subtler subversion—violating the social norm of rapid, powered transportation to notice what fast travelers miss.
Through walking, these authors become more attuned to the places they move across, more attentive to intricate ecologies and layered histories—and more connected to themselves as well. Their small steps of rebellion lead to unexpected discoveries.
The volume includes writers of national renown such as Tom Zoellner, Ruth Knafo Setton, and Rahul Mehta, as well as contributors in other fields, from photography to music to archaeology.
The editor, Ann de Forest, is a California native who has been living and writing in fairly happy exile in Philadelphia for more than three decades. An expert in the urban landscape and the resonance of place, she is a contributing writer for HIDDEN CITY DAILY and editor of EXTANT MAGAZINE. Her poems, short stories, and essays have appeared in COAL HILL REVIEW, NOCTUA REVIEW, UNBROKEN, HOTEL AMERIKA, THE JOURNAL, PIF, CLEAVER MAGAZINE, and THE BEST SHORT STORIES OF PHILADELPHIA.
May 12, 2022
Links to Launch Events Here
Nonfiction, 264 pages
paperback / $18.95 / ISBN 978-1-7355585-2-3
ebook / $9.95 / ISBN 978-1-7355585-3-0
Contributors:
|
Yasser Allaham
Liana Brent Nancy Brokaw Justin Coffin Ann de Forest Dwight Sterling Dunston Victoria Reynolds Farmer Mark Geanuleas Jay Heinrichs Kathryn Hellerstein Mickey Herr Hannah Judd JeeYeun Lee |
Adrienne Mackey
Rahul Mehta Christine Nelson Lena Popkin Nathaniel Popkin Paula Read Kabria Rogers David Hallock Sanders Ruth Knafo Setton JJ Tiziou Sharon White Kalela Williams Tom Zoellner |
Reviews
“Walking’s pleasures are infinite, and those in Ways of Walking hardly less so. Editor Ann de Forest has assembled an eloquent team of rambling writers who offer readers intriguing discoveries at every turn of the page. The twenty-six essays assembled here contain fresh takes on city streets and foggy mountaintops, haunting riversides and dicey edgelands. Often, the celebrated wonders of walking stand aside to let danger, disability, and discouragement have their say, too. One high point is a self-doubting pilgrimage through library vaults to commune with the climate-controlled notebooks of Henry David Thoreau. In 1851 Thoreau advised himself, ‘Probe the universe in a myriad points.’ That could be the epigraph for this rewarding volume. Whether you take your steps in ten-league boots or bedroom slippers, you will find insight and inspiration a-plenty in these stimulating pages.”
--William Sharpe, Barnard College, author of The Art of Walking: A History in 100 Images (Yale University Press, forthcoming)
“Put one foot in front of the other. These 26 thoughtful, troubled and inspired writers have done just that, and they’ve brought back rich insights that remind us that walking is the most literary of exercises. Ways of Walking is really about the myriad ways we experience the world when we encounter it intimately, without the mediating devices of modern life.”
--Inga Saffron, Philadelphia Inquirer, author of Becoming Philadelphia
“This rich, readerly collection of essays on the multiple possibilities open to us as members of a species constitutively shaped by its ability to walk on two feet is, simply, inspiring. Its writers vividly record the travails and the triumphs of their travels on foot, in ways that force us to reconceptualise our relationship both to the environments we inhabit and to one another. The book is a moving, endlessly stimulating invitation to walk, to think, and to rethink walking.”
--Matthew Beaumont, author of The Walker: On Finding and Losing Yourself in the Modern City
“Ways of Walking—a spirited, surprising, often profound book of essays…—limns pathways through Chicago streets and Jordanian hills, across the pedestrian-unfriendly freeways of Los Angeles and the basalt stones of the Via Appia Antica, the ancient Roman road.
The anthology also illuminates ways of walking: as joyful exploration or meditative practice, as resistance and trespass, toward a destination or with the journey as its own reward.
The 26 essayists include a woman who uses a wheelchair, a Black man writing to his deceased father about walking around Philadelphia, a Korean immigrant who traverses former Native pathways spanning from downtown Chicago, and a man whose father lost, from dementia, the ability to self-navigate on foot. That inclusivity reminds us that our gender, race, size, cognitive ability, and physical condition all shape how and where and why we walk.…
This book left me hopeful. Amid obstacles and oppressions, despite exiles and forced marches, humans continue to get up and walk—in sorrow, for justice, with joy—a slow, incremental journey that changes us with every step.”
--Anndee Hochman, Broad Street Review
“Walking’s pleasures are infinite, and those in Ways of Walking hardly less so. Editor Ann de Forest has assembled an eloquent team of rambling writers who offer readers intriguing discoveries at every turn of the page. The twenty-six essays assembled here contain fresh takes on city streets and foggy mountaintops, haunting riversides and dicey edgelands. Often, the celebrated wonders of walking stand aside to let danger, disability, and discouragement have their say, too. One high point is a self-doubting pilgrimage through library vaults to commune with the climate-controlled notebooks of Henry David Thoreau. In 1851 Thoreau advised himself, ‘Probe the universe in a myriad points.’ That could be the epigraph for this rewarding volume. Whether you take your steps in ten-league boots or bedroom slippers, you will find insight and inspiration a-plenty in these stimulating pages.”
--William Sharpe, Barnard College, author of The Art of Walking: A History in 100 Images (Yale University Press, forthcoming)
“Put one foot in front of the other. These 26 thoughtful, troubled and inspired writers have done just that, and they’ve brought back rich insights that remind us that walking is the most literary of exercises. Ways of Walking is really about the myriad ways we experience the world when we encounter it intimately, without the mediating devices of modern life.”
--Inga Saffron, Philadelphia Inquirer, author of Becoming Philadelphia
“This rich, readerly collection of essays on the multiple possibilities open to us as members of a species constitutively shaped by its ability to walk on two feet is, simply, inspiring. Its writers vividly record the travails and the triumphs of their travels on foot, in ways that force us to reconceptualise our relationship both to the environments we inhabit and to one another. The book is a moving, endlessly stimulating invitation to walk, to think, and to rethink walking.”
--Matthew Beaumont, author of The Walker: On Finding and Losing Yourself in the Modern City
“Ways of Walking—a spirited, surprising, often profound book of essays…—limns pathways through Chicago streets and Jordanian hills, across the pedestrian-unfriendly freeways of Los Angeles and the basalt stones of the Via Appia Antica, the ancient Roman road.
The anthology also illuminates ways of walking: as joyful exploration or meditative practice, as resistance and trespass, toward a destination or with the journey as its own reward.
The 26 essayists include a woman who uses a wheelchair, a Black man writing to his deceased father about walking around Philadelphia, a Korean immigrant who traverses former Native pathways spanning from downtown Chicago, and a man whose father lost, from dementia, the ability to self-navigate on foot. That inclusivity reminds us that our gender, race, size, cognitive ability, and physical condition all shape how and where and why we walk.…
This book left me hopeful. Amid obstacles and oppressions, despite exiles and forced marches, humans continue to get up and walk—in sorrow, for justice, with joy—a slow, incremental journey that changes us with every step.”
--Anndee Hochman, Broad Street Review
