ENVIRONMENTAL STORIES

Defining “environmental stories” is like trying to hold dark matter in your hand, or knowing the national debt. Or it’s like Janet Malcolm trying to profile the artist, David Salle. Meaning, it’s a little mysterious, hard to put in a box or wrestle into a paragraph because the word “environment” itself contains pretty much everything. But we will try.

In the simplest terms we can muster, environmental stories illuminate, investigate, observe, and/or interpret relationships between living beings and non-living beings and their environment(s).

Science writing, nature writing, climate writing, environmental justice texts, investigative journalism— all important genres, but not always what we consider an environmental story when they lean toward explanatory modes. Environmental stories can contain these genres, but at their core, they must contain a story with stakes for the reader and the author and the environment itself. For example, we love bees, and books that explain the habits and lives of bees—but we don’t consider them environmental stories.

Environmental stories, for us, contain plot, characters, structure, adjectives, and hold emotions like love, loathing, jealousy. They contain facts, but ask more questions than answers they provide. They have beginnings, middles, and ends that don’t always follow a traditional timeline. Environmental stories are texts that connect us, or reinforce empathy, compassion, generosity, and cooperation. Environmental stories connect the dots between the past and present. They ignite imagination and curiosity. They can fit in the palm of your hand or lodge itself in some small place in your throat or your heart. Environmental stories can make bridges instead of moats.

On our READINGS page and in the lineup below, are texts we feel exemplify these ideas.