Touch Grass

(Transcript here.)

A sense of place can ground your story, or create a mood, or give it something really unique. Unfortunately, in an era in which we are all way too online, it’s easy to neglect this, and stick our characters in a weird featureless void. So how can we escape the set design from THX-1138? One way is by engaging with nature. Here to talk about it is Ashely Adams.

Recommended Reading:

• Annie Dillard “Total Eclipse”

• Aldo Leopold Sand County Almanac

• Ursula K. Le Guin

• Jeff Vandermeer

• Andrew F. Sullivan The Marigold, Waste

• Robin Wall Kimmerer

• Octavia Butler’s Parable books

• Beowulf (no really)

• Gwendolyn Kiste, The Rust Maidens

• Nicole Walker,” Microclimates Lower Sonoran”

• Brooke Bolander The Only Harmless Great Thing

• Rachel Carson

• John Brunner The Sheep Look Up

• Anne McCaffrey’s Pern Series

• Wayne Barlowe’s Expedition

• Peter Matthiessen The Snow Leopard

• Flyway

• Ecotone

• Aimee Nezhukumatathil “The Soils I Have Eaten”

• Caitlin Horrocks “The Sleep”

• BK Loren Animal Mineral Radical

• Sherwin Bitsui Flood Song

• Ernestine Hayes “Winter in Lingit Brings Magpies and Ravens”

• John D’Agata About a Mountain