ENVIRONMENTAL STORIES

The definition of environmental stories changes all the time on this page, simply because the word “environment” itself is hard to define. It’s like trying to hold dark matter in your hand or knowing the national debt…or like Janet Malcolm trying to profile the artist, David Salle. Meaning, it’s big, it’s mysterious, it’s hard to put in a box or in a paragraph, and contorts the more you try.

In the simplest terms we can muster, environmental stories are stories* that illuminate, investigate, observe, and/or interpret relationships between place and any combination of living beings, non-living elements, and non-tangible things. When we say “non-tangible things” we mean everything from society and politics to history and racism. Intangible things also expresses actions such as building, containing, or losing. Pretty much anything you cannot touch physically. For us, the two most important concepts here are relationships and stories.

Relationships can be between land and history, or squirrels and children, or doorknobs and brutalism. And of those relationships, the one that gets top billing is the relationship between internal and external landscapes, as Barry Lopez wrote so elegantly about in his essay, “Landscape and Narrative.”

Science writing, nature writing, climate writing, environmental justice writing, investigative journalism— all great genres, but not necessarily environmental stories. Environmental stories can contain these genres, but at their core, they must contain a story. Because stories can connect us with other lives. They can reinforce empathy, love, compassion, generosity, and cooperation with other living beings. Stories can connect the dots between the past and present Stories can 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. Stories can make bridges instead of moats.

*novels, narrative nonfiction, memoir, poetry, etc.