Elementals: Earth, Vol. 1

Earth, Volume 1 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.

Earth is at once planet, place, and material. Both tiny and huge, earth can manifest as a single grain of sand and a blinding storm in the desert. Earth nurtures a budding stem and the expansive rhizomic roots of an ancient forest. What if we understand ourselves as creatures who exist because of generational, collaborative, creative, earthen exuberance? The stories and poems in this volume offer elemental paths toward an ethic of interdependence, connection, and care for planet, place, and other earthlings. Welcome to Earth.

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 Earth, Volume 1 include: Gavin Van Horn - Bruce Jennings - Hannah Eisler Burnett - Kristi Leora Gansworth - Oyah Beverly A. Scott - Alexis Pauline Gumbs - Marcia Bjornerud - Laticia McNaughton - Rita Dove - Jane Slade - Emma Gilheany - Melissa Tuckey - Imani Jacqueline Brown - Franny Choi - Danielle B. Joyner - Liam Heneghan - Nickole Brown - Tia M. Pocknett - Andreas Weber - Jessica Jacobs - Robin Wall Kimmerer

With compelling stories and insightful reflections, Earth, Volume 1 reveals how people are working with, adapting to, and cocreating relational depth and ecological diversity by respectfully attending to the earthly 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.

Hannah Eisler Burnett is an anthropologist whose work focuses on water, property, toxicity, and capital. She is the Jamaica Bay Coastal Resilience Specialist for New York Sea Grant, where she works with New York City's coastal communities to imagine and build a just climate future. Before that, she was Communications and Editorial Associate for the Center for Humans and Nature. Hannah received her PhD in anthropology from the University of Chicago in 2023.

Kristi Leora Gansworth is Anishinabe-kwe, a scholar, maker, and poet.

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.