Elementals: An Elemental Life, Vol. 5

An Elemental Life, Volume 5 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.

If the elements are kin to one another, then what does it mean to live in kinship with the elements? Asking this question encourages a perspective shift from interacting with the elementals to partaking in their being. The stories and poems in this volume bring the elements into conversation with one another in order to open awareness, heighten connection, and offer practices that can help us live more elementally. Welcome to An Elemental Life.

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 An Elemental Life, Volume 5 include: Gavin Van Horn - Bruce Jennings - John Hausdoerffer - David George Haskell - Suzanne Kelly - Marie Fuhrman - Elizabeth J. Coleman - Yakuta Poonawalla - Leeanna T. Torres - Sean Hill - Liz Beachy G?mez - Sophie Strand - Matthew Olzmann - Allison Adelle Hedge Coke - David Macauley - Joerg Rieger - Brenda Hillman - Carina Lyall - Priyanka Kumar - Heather Swan

With compelling stories and insightful reflections, An Elemental Life, Volume 5 reveals how people are working with, adapting to, and cocreating relational depth and ecological diversity by respectfully attending to the elemental 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.

John Hausdoerffer has been the author or coeditor of numerous books on the intersection of environmental ethics and social justice, including Catlin's Lament, Wildness, What Kind of Ancestor Do You Want to Be?, and Kinship. He is Professor of Philosophy at Western Colorado University.

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.