\u3cem\u3eTestimony\u3c/em\u3e, \u3cem\u3eRefuge\u3c/em\u3e, and the Sense of Place: A Conversation with Terry Tempest Williams

This interview with Terry Tempest Williams is part of a series of conversations with contemporary western writers about the ethical and cultural implications of nature writing

Dominion, Dressing, Keeping

In this essay, David Sumner uses his experiences rafting on the Colorado River to juxtapose the Biblical notions of dressing and keeping with ethical environmentalism

Activism, Fly Fishing, and Fiction: A Conversation with David James Duncan

This interview with David James Duncan is part of a series of conversations with contemporary western writers about the ethical and cultural implications of nature writing

That Could Happen : Nature Writing, the Nature Fakers, and a Rhetoric of Assent

Much has been made about the relationship between nature writing and science. The foundation of the genre is empirical observation of the more-than-human world. That’s not the whole of it, however. Because of the pairing of empiricism and other human experience, readers come to the genre with certain assumptions: they assume the text will tell them something independently verifiable about the object world--something they could see, hear, or touch if they were in the same location at the same time. They assume they are reading nonfiction, and for most readers, that distinction is important. Readers also come to nature writing with the hope that the writer will use imagination to help them see the world in a new way and possibly offer them a different and better relationship to the more-than-human sphere. If the proceeding is true, nature writing as a genre is unique, and we must ask: how should we read nonfiction nature writing? How does the nonfiction distinction change the relationship between the writer and the reader? The writer and the world? The reader and the world? In this article, Sumner argues that a rhetoric of assent is necessary when reading nature writers because nature writers are imaginatively exploring how we humans can establish a more ethical relationship with the more-than-human world

Location and Landscape in Literary Americanisms: H. L. Davis and F. Scott Fitzgerald

Well into the twentieth century, western American literature was still dismissed as regional or was boxed in by the genre expectations of pulp Westerns. This chapter focuses less on the causes of an eastern dismissal of western literature and more on what is unique about western literature, including how it reflects the larger western experience. Sumner looks at the particular Americanisms evident in the letters of the American West, using two short stories to make his argument: H. L. Davis’s Open Winter and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Babylon Revisited

Facts, Shapes, Our Relationship with the Landscape: A Conversation with David Quammen

This interview with David Quammen is part of a series of conversations with contemporary western writers about the ethical and cultural implications of nature writing

Nature Writing, American Literature, and the Idea of Community: A Conversation with Barry Lopez

This interview with Barry Lopez is part of a series of conversations with contemporary western writers about the ethical and cultural implications of nature writing