New Release
Open the Floodgates
by Nina Schuyler
In an unnamed California town, the River is granted personhood and has the right–-and urgent need–-to argue in court for its existence. But powerful, well-funded enemies are determined to keep the River exactly as it is: gunk-filled, toxic, a convenient dumping ground for waste. When the River is ultimately jailed, the town faces a reckoning: what do we owe the River? And the River must answer in turn: what, if anything, does it owe humans?
Books
Natural Consequences:
Intimate Essays for a
Planet in Peril
by Char Miller, Professor of Environmental Analysis and History, Pomona College
In over forty site-specific essays that range from the middle of the Pacific Ocean to the author's own backyard in Claremont, California, Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril gives critical historical context to current ecological challenges such as fire, drought, development, and fracking.
Tales of the Urban Wild:
A Puma's Journey
By Tiffany Yap DEnv/PhD
Illustrated by Meital Smith
Tales of the Urban Wild follows the life of a young male mountain lion as he struggles to establish his own territory. Navigating urban regions and wildlands, he confronts many challenging obstacles. The story brings awareness to the impact of humans and climate change — impingement on territory, water shortage, fires — for mountain lions and other wildlife.
Knowing Wonder: An Elephant Story
By Merrill Sapp
Illustrated by Gareth Hook
Feel the rhythm of life within an elephant family. Journey with Lua along the interwoven paths that she shares with the living planet as she travels by mental map of sensation and experience. Both fiction and nonfiction, Knowing Wonder: An Elephant Story invites you to explore the world of elephants within the context of real behavior and events connected with scientific insight into their inner lives. Know the intimacy of an elephant family in birth and death, joy and sorrow as Lua navigates the seasons of her life on our ever-changing earth.
Open the Floodgates
“Nina Schuyler's remarkable and wildly inventive new novel, Open the Floodgates, infuses environmental literature with compassion and ingenuity. In her compelling story, The River goes to court, along with a rich tapestry of townspeople who proclaim their love for her in their own unique ways. Schuyler tells this story with exquisite prose and a pulsing heart.”
— Ellen Sussman, New York Times bestselling author of French Lessons, Wedding in Provence, Paradise Guest House and On a Night Like This.
Author Bio
Nina Schuyler is the author of four other fiction books and teaches creative writing at Stanford Continuing Studies and the independent bookstore, Book Passage. She graduated from Stanford University with a B.A. in Economics with Honors, UC Law San Francisco, where she earned a J.D., and San Francisco State University, where she earned an MFA.
Nina Schuyler’s short story collection, In this Ravishing World, won the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Literary Award, the W.S. Porter Prize for Short Story Collections, and the Prism Prize for Climate Literature. It was also a finalist for the Northern California Book Award. Her novel, Afterword, won the Foreword INDIE Book of the Year Award for Literary and Science Fiction and was named a Notable 100 Book in the 2023 Shelf Unbound Best Indie Book Competition. Her novel, The Translator, won the Next Generation Indie Book Award for General Fiction and was a finalist for the William Saroyan International Writing Prize. Her novel, The Painting, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Award.
She is also the author of How to Write Stunning Sentences and has an extensive following of her Substack newsletter of the same name.
Knowing Wonder: An Elephant Story
Experience the rhythm of life within an elephant family. Journey with Lua as she leads her family along the interwoven paths that she shares with humans and other animals as they confront a land on the brink of collapse. Both fiction and non-fiction, Knowing Wonder: An Elephant Story invites you to explore the world of elephants within the context of real behavior and events connected with scientific insight into their inner lives. Know the family’s intimacy in birth and death, joy and sorrow. As Lua navigates the seasons of her life, she will challenge you to change the way you see her and the world. You will never look at elephants the same.
“This touching and insightful book introduces us to elephants as they are to themselves, and to us when we get to know them: fully elephant persons, with their own particular glories, tragedies and concerns in which we can recognize our own. The author does this with a combination of head and heart, of science and love, which brings out the best of each. Indeed, I know of no other way to save either the elephants or ourselves. Reading Knowing Wonder is an urgent privilege.”
– Patrick Curry, Ph.D., author of Ecological Ethics (2017) and Editor-in-Chief of The Ecological Citizen.
About the Author
Merrill Sapp is a cognitive psychologist, physician assistant, professor, and student of nature. She has traveled the world to learn about and work in the service of elephants. As a cognitive psychologist, she explores elephants’ experience of the world to show how they respond to their surroundings and their surroundings respond back. Her writing has appeared in About Place Journal, Ecological Citizen, Earth Island Journal, and Mongabay News. She teaches at Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri.
About the Artist
Gareth Hook grew up on a remote farm in Zimbabwe and learned at an early age the unique, sometimes hostile ways of the untamed world. His education, including a Fine Arts degree from Rhodes University, led to his passion for painting, drawing, and capturing the essence of the African animal. Gareth’s close affinity with the natural world informs his subject matter, and he has made generous donations of his artwork to support conservation and anti-poaching efforts in Zimbabwe.
Tales of the Urban Wild: A Puma’s Journey
For two young mountain lions born in central California, where cityscape meets wilderness, life isn’t easy. Soon after their mother leaves them to fend for themselves, a dominant male puma attacks, sending them running. The brother who dashes across a treacherous highway is hit by a truck and killed. The brother who hides up a tree survives. And so the journey begins.
Tales of the Urban Wild: A Puma’s Journey follows the lone brother, who local scientists tag as C-8, as he navigates what humans have done to the landscape.
Drawing from meticulous research, conservation scientist Tiffany Yap weaves together many diverse animal and human stories, celebrating the beauty and wonder of ecology, interconnectivity, and representation. With artist Meital Smith’s spectacular illustrations in the rich gold and earth tones of central California, this debut graphic novel inspires and teaches us what it means to share and protect this earth together.
About the Author
Tiffany Yap is a conservation scientist based in the San Francisco Bay Area. She holds a doctorate in environmental science and engineering and has published studies in Science, EcoHealth, and other scientific journals. Her work has been featured in major news outlets, including The New York Times, LA Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and NPR.
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About the Artist
Meital Smith is an illustrator and artist from Seattle, Washington. She graduated from Cornish College of the Arts with a BFA in Design in 2021 and is currently pursuing an MAT at the Rhode Island School of Design. Meital’s work has appeared in The Lily, and in 2021, she self-published her graphic novella Yesh Lanu Machaneh, which documents her community’s experience at her beloved summer camp, Camp Miriam.
Natural Consequences
Take This Book for a Hike
Drought and fires, floods and rising tides: These and other climate-driven forces are compelling us to examine our role as inhabitants of our imperiled planet. In over forty vitally important essays and vignettes, Natural Consequences is Char Miller’s literary tour de force that illuminates the historical background of how we got here, what we need to do now, and how we can thrive into the future.
“Equal parts charming and unsettling, these are illuminating accounts of the world we inhabit now. And the essays come with lots of good advice, above all: go for a walk. But maybe stick this volume in your back pocket.”
– Bill McKibben, author of The Flag, the Cross, and the Station Wagon
“Char Miller's Natural Consequences is a marvelous journey across sublime Southern California landscapes with a noble outdoor guide from the Aldo Leopold tradition. With his keen knowledge of Western water policy, forest management, weather patterns, desert ethics, mountain lore and fish hatcheries, Miller educates readers about the conservation challenges his home state faces in the 21st century.”
– Douglas Brinkley, Professor of History at Rice University and author of Silent Spring Revolution: John F. Kennedy, Rachel Carson, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon and the Great Environmental Awakening.
About the Author
Char Miller is the W.M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College, Claremont, California. Professor Miller is a publicly engaged historian, widely active in efforts to address environmental issues and provide historical context to climate change. He is author of over fifteen books, including Westside Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement and Not So Golden State: Sustainability vs. the California Dream. His most recent book is Burn Scars: A Documentary History of Fire Suppression (Oregon State University Press, 2024). His is also an active voice in op-eds and commentaries in the press, including the Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle.
Links to Reviews, Interviews & More
BOOM California Excerpt:
https://boomcalifornia.org/2023/02/27/natural-consequences-intimate-essays-for-a-planet-in-peril/
Los Angeles Times Book Review:
https://lareviewofbooks.org/article/hot-time-in-the-biocity-on-char-millers-natural-consequences/
Mono Basin Historical Society interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISLsJLs0DTQ&list=PL2pF--CQ3TpMXiD-BECPNHkg9_iPrSAoo&index=1&t=1921s