Honorable mention

Here are the winners of the ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment) Environmental Creative Writing Award. 
Honorable Mentions:
Lisa Knopp (University of Nebraska, Omaha) for What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte, U of Missouri P, 2012.
Amy Espeseth (University of Melbourne) for Sufficient Grace, Scribe, 2012.
Winner:
David Gessner (University of North Carolina, Wilmington) for The Tarball Chronicles: A Journey Beyond the Oiled Pelican and into the Heart of the Gulf Oil Spill, Milkweed Press, 2011.

ASLE Book Awards finalist

I just found out this morning that my most recent book, What the River Carries, is one of the finalists for the 2011-2012 ASLE (Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment) Book Awards. Hurrah! Hurray! I've put the books by the other finalists in the Environmental Creative Nonfiction category at the top of my summer reading list. Here they are in case you want to do the same:

SueEllen Campbell, The Face of the Earth: Natural Landscapes, Science, and Culture, U of California P, 2011.

Amy Espeseth, Sufficient Grace, Scribe, 2012.

David Gessner, My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism, Milkweed, 2011.

David Gessner, The Tarball Chronicles: A Journey Beyond the Oiled Pelican and into the Heart of the Gulf Oil Spill, Milkweed, 2012.

Lisa Knopp, What the River Carries: Encounters with the Mississippi, Missouri, and Platte, U of Missouri P, 2012.

Susan Fox Rogers, My Reach: A Hudson River Memoir, Cornell UP, 2011.

 

The Nebraska Book Festival 2013

You're invited to the Nebraska Book Festival this Saturday at the University of Nebraska-Omaha's Thompson Alumni Center. From 1:15 to 2:00, Todd Robinson and I will be reading from our new books in the Andersen Hospitality Room. I may read something brand new as well. This event is free and open to the public.

Two new publications

"The Year of the Rabbit" in the March 2013 issue of NEBRASKAland is a short and hopefully humorous essay about my efforts, with my son's help, to rabbit-proof my backyard vegetable garden.

"Mississippi Harvest" in the current issue of Big Muddy: Journals of the Missisisppi River Valley chronicles the history of the pearl (mussel shell) button industry in Muscatine, Iowa, from 1890 into the 1940s and current attempts to restore mussel beds in the Upper Mississippi.

A review of What the River Carries

Here's an insightful review of What the River Carries by Scott Aichinger, a UNO graduate student in creative nonfiction. It was published in the winter 2013 issue of the Nebraska Center for the Book News (see page 7).

http://centerforthebook.nebraska.gov/docs/publications/newsletter.pdf