Perspectives on Publishing Personal Essays on Nature and Environment
by Ann Wendland
This article was first published in The Exchange, Spring 2003.
University presses have a proud tradition of regional publishing. It is an area that fulfills a stated mission of many AAUP members— to publish for and about the communities that surround and support them. Regional publishing can also be an opportunity for a press to build a strong trade publishing program, and some regional titles have the potential for national appeal. Literary nonfiction that emphasizes nature and environment is one of the most important and vibrant genres within regional publishing. Ann Wendland, Publicity Manager at the University of Arizona Press and Exchange Contributing Editor, has undertaken to explore the place of writing of place within the changing worlds of publishing, writing, and reading. In this issue she talks to editors and publishers; look to future issues for perspectives on these titles from the marketing and sales departments.
The View from the Editor’s Desk
Literary nonfiction about the places where we live has held its own through these tough times. An April 28 Publisher’s Weekly feature attributes the success to the uplifting spirit of books about nature and their focus on areas close to home in times when Americans have cut travel.
After talking with five of the best editors and publishers in the field, I believe that these books have enduring success because their intense specificity, powerful writing, and close attention create transcendent experiences for readers in a time that is otherwise dislocated, hurried, and unfocused. A great essay is a big moon rising behind the streetlights and exhaust—all of our forgotten wonder and longing for life come brimming up.
Barbara Ras, now director of Trinity University Press, created and shaped stellar environmental literature lists as an editor at University of Georgia Press and Sierra Club Books. Ras, who won the Walt Whitman Award for her own poetry collection, Bite Every Sorrow (LSU), has published such writers as Barry Lopez, Rebecca Solnit, Paul Shepard, David Kline, and Rick Bass.
I asked how she knows when she’s reading important new work with a broad audience.
“It’s hard to predict. You have to gauge the level of raw enthusiasm that you feel as an editor, whether the work possesses that irresistible style and personal magnetism that makes you want to leap over all the obstacles to publish it.”
I wondered if university presses have a special niche in publishing personal essays on nature and environment; Ras doesn’t consider it a niche so much as an opportunity.
“University presses have a better shot at publishing some of these books because the New York houses need to be certain of high sales.” She also sees our regional readers as significant assets.
“In my experience, trying to break out a regional book to a national audience is overrated. It’s a better strategy to build from a concentrated center and move out in concentric circles.”
I asked Barbara if she sees any trends in the writing.
“Writers are getting more sophisticated and content-conscious. I’m not interested in what Kim Stafford called ‘first-person rhapsodic’ because it’s just too bland and vapid. I’m interested in something that’s going to deliver local lore and legend, culture, history, and natural history—coherent useful knowledge that not only informs you about a place but instructs you about how to be in the world.”
Emilie Buchwald is newly publisher emeritus of Milkweed Editions, the small press that has profoundly shaped the field of personal essays on nature and environment. Milkweed publishes series including Credo and Literature for a Land Ethic, and has recently published Janisse Ray, Annick Smith, William Kittredge, Alison Deming, Terry Tempest Williams, and many others vital to this field.
Buchwald feels that she’s discovered significant work with broad appeal if “a writer has written with verve about place—highly localized place. The more details the better. The best writing is made vivid by the choice of details that will make readers everywhere able to take part imaginatively in the writing.”
When I asked about trends in the genre, Emilie answered, “I see writers recognizing that their greatest strength lies in writing about a place they feel inside their bones.
“I would like to see writing that is not merely elegiac—about the loss of place—but filled with ideas for how to preserve, rebuild, rewild and rethink the issue. I don’t know whether that’s a trend, but it’s certainly the kind of book I’m interested in. We’ve just published Janisse Ray’s Wild Card Quilt, which represents exactly that kind of attitude.”
Formerly Editor-in-Chief of the University of Arizona Press, Gregory McNamee is a highly regarded essayist and anthologist. McNamee edits Arizona’s new Desert Places series, in which writers and photographers work together to portray their experience of a favorite corner of the desert.
I asked Gregory if he thought university presses would, and should, continue to be important publishers of personal essays on nature and environment.
“A university press
properly situated should stake claim for its region,” Gregory answered.
“It has the constituency and the tradition of literary quality and
excellence—from natural history to landscape writing. Editors should
look for good books that interpret the places we live and, indeed,
advocate for them.”
Why does some place-based work fascinate readers
everywhere? Gregory feels the stories transcend place to make a
difference in the world.
“It’s the quality of work, not the familiarity
of setting that’s important to readers. No one calls Walden a regional
book.”
I asked Gregory what trends he saw, or hoped he saw, in the
literature.
“There’s been a powerful strain of rhetorical posing,
self-indulgence, and moralism in nature writing,” Gregory commented.
“The genre could benefit from a purging of this moralism.” He sees the
writing becoming even more resistant to categorization and working
along the connections between art, literature, and science. He
celebrates the trend toward writing about livable cities and lived-in
landscapes, rather than pristine nature.
Mary Elizabeth Braun, an
acquisitions editor at Oregon State University Press, also sees nature
writing venturing into cities and into multiple fields. Oregon is well
known for a distinguished list that investigates life in the Northwest
from every angle—from macrolichen guidebooks to edgy essays.
Asked
about trends, Mary answered that current environmental concerns have
strongly affected the field, that writing is expanding beyond
traditional wilderness settings, and that the cadre of authors is
changing.
“Rather than just penning rhapsodic tributes to the wonders
of supposedly pristine nature,” Mary said, “writers are working to
educate and motivate their readers—tackling health, food, agriculture, and quality of-life issues, and paying more attention to environmental justice.”
Nature and science writers are writing about urban and suburban environments in books such as Sagebrush and Cappucino (Sierra Club), Suburban Wild (Georgia), and City Wilds (Georgia). More people trained in the natural sciences are writing books for broad audiences, often including personal narratives such as bryologist Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Gathering Moss (Oregon).
With all the expansion and diversification in the field, what does an editor home in on?
“The primary quality I look for is fluid, intelligent writing. Secondary qualities include a subject matter of timely interest, a good fit with our list, and an author willing to help promote the book.”
I asked Mary if she thought that university presses have unique advantages in this area.
“Perhaps we do, although many of the more notable titles in recent years have come from commercial houses, not just university presses. We may be in a better position because we’re willing to take risks on such books, which may be written by less well known writers than a commercial house might want. Also, such authors and books may receive closer attention from university presses.”
Karen Orchard is the new director of Oregon State University Press and former director of the University of Georgia Press. Georgia grew into one of the country’s best mid-sized presses in Karen’s 28 years there, establishing exceptional fiction, poetry, and literary nonfiction lists.
She and I talked about the national appeal of place-specific work like Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (Milkweed), much of which is set in a junkyard.
“When the author is a master storyteller and you know that, it doesn’t matter whether the junkyard was in south Georgia or northern California—what matters is the truth and power of the story.”
She feels that university presses have claimed a special place in publishing personal essays on nature and environment.
“At a time when authors of short fiction collections were having difficulty finding publishers, a few university presses (Georgia, LSU, Pittsburgh, and Illinois among them) made ongoing commitments to publishing book-length short fiction and contributed to a renaissance of that genre. I think that the same has been true more recently for literary nonfiction.
“Essays on nature and the environment, in particular, are a good fit for regional trade publishing programs. Those titles often hold the promise and possibility of breaking into the national trade. They have done especially well on the regional trade lists of university presses because we are very good at reaching their core market—general readers who care deeply about the place they call home.
“These books also often present opportunities for building on strengths a press already has. When I became director of the University of Georgia Press in the mid-1990s, one of the initiatives we pursued was an interdisciplinary list in environmental studies. Our tradition of literary publishing made creative works a natural addition to the scholarly studies, handbooks, and field guides that we planned for that list.”
Personal essays about nature appear to be venturing off of high ground to risky, complex new turf— our own very diverse homes. Because home is where the heart is, these essays engage and provoke readers.
According to AAUP’s “The Value of University Presses,” our publishing programs promote engagement with ideas, preserve the distinctiveness of local cultures, and sustain a literate culture. Perhaps we have a special opportunity to distinguish our presses in this genre because so many of our goals and strengths are at work in it.