Elementals: Fire, Vol. 4

Fire, Volume 4 of the 5-Volume Elementals series, is a stunning collection of essays, poetry, and stories that illuminate the dynamic relationships between people and place, human and nonhuman life, mind and the material world, and the living energies that make all life possible.

Fire remains wild, increasingly so today, but its domestication changed the course of human evolution. If fire speaks, what is it saying to us perennially, and especially in an era of climate breakdown and mass extinction? A relationship with fire and the other elementals is not a solo endeavor. The stories and poems in this volume are tongues of fire, beckoning us to keep and tend the communal fire. Welcome to Fire.

The Elementals series explores how people from various cultures across the planet have worked with these powerful forces of change and regeneration to shape landscapes and deepen personal and place-based relationships. Contributors for Fire, Volume 4 include: Gavin Van Horn - Bruce Jennings - Stephanie Krzywonos - Jane Hirshfield - Charlotte Du Cann - Em Strang - Isaac Yuen - Catharina Coenen - Lucille Lang Day - Eiren Caffall - Glenn Albrecht - David Baker - Tyson Yunkaporta - Tamiko Beyer - Jos? Gonz?lez - Miriam Morrill - Ron W. Goode - Rina Garcia Chua - Nina Mingya Powles - Camille T. Dungy - Jane Caputi

With compelling stories and insightful reflections, Fire, Volume 4 reveals how people are working with, adapting to, and cocreating relational depth and ecological diversity by respectfully attending to the fiery forces that shape our everyday worlds.

Proceeds from sales of Elementals benefit the nonprofit organization Center for Humans & Nature, home to a press and farm that explore in-depth and diverse perspectives about what it means to be human in an interconnected world. Humans & Nature Press shares ideas that build community and inspire action. Humans & Nature Farm is a place where ideas take root. The Center is a place to experience human connection with nature and consider our responsibilities to the whole community of life.

Stephanie Krzywonos is a Xicana writer and graduate student at the University of Iowa's Nonfiction Writing Program. Her first book, Ice Folx: An Antarctic Memoir, is forthcoming from Atria in 2025.

Gavin Van Horn is Executive Editor of Humans and Nature Press, the author of The Way of Coyote, and the coeditor of City Creatures, Wildness, and the award-winning five-volume series Kinship. He currently resides in the lands of the Northern Chumash people in San Luis Obispo, California, where you can find him wandering the nearby hills and shores, learning the flowers, trying to go light.

Bruce Jennings teaches and writes on ethical and social issues in healthcare at Vanderbilt University. He is Developmental Editor for CHN Press Books and Senior Fellow at the Center for Humans and Nature. He is author of several books and many articles in the fields of bio-medical ethics, public health, and ecological ethics. Among his books is Ecological Governance: Toward a New Social Contract with the Earth (2016).

Nickole Brown is the author of Sister and Fanny Says. She lives in Asheville, North Carolina, where she volunteers at several animal sanctuaries. To Those Who Were Our First Gods, a chapbook of poems about these animals, won the 2018 Rattle Prize, and her essay-in-poems, The Donkey Elegies, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press in 2020. In 2021, Spruce Books of Penguin Random House published Write It! 100 Poetry Prompts to Inspire, a book she coauthored with Jessica Jacobs, and they teach generative writing sessions together as part of their SunJune Literary Collaborative.

Craig Santos Perez is an indigenous Chamoru from the Pacific Island of Guam. He is the author of six books of poetry and the coeditor of seven anthologies. He is Professor in the English department at the University of Hawai'i, Manoa.