Work

We are members of the most destructive culture ever to exist. Our assault on the natural world, on indigenous and other cultures, on women, on children, on all of us through the possibility of nuclear suicide and other means — all these are unprecedented in their magnitude and ferocity.”

So began my first book, Listening to the Land. Why do we act as we do? What are sane and effective responses to outrageously destructive behavior? What will it take for us to stop the horrors that characterize our way of being? My work and life revolve around these questions. Read on to explore with me.

“Thought to Exist in the Wild” wins 2008 Eric Hoffer Award

The Hoffer Award was founded at the start of the 21st century by award-winning author Christopher Klim (with permission from the Eric Hoffer Estate) to honor freethinking writers and independent books of exceptional merit. The commercial environment for today’s writers has all but crushed the circulation of ideas. It seems strange that in the Information Age, many books are blocked from wider circulation, and powerful writing is barred from publication or buried alive on the Internet. Furthermore, many of the top literary prizes will not even consider independent books or previously unpublished prose, choosing instead to become the marketing arms of large presses.

The “Hoffer” honored prose is largely unpublished and the books are chiefly from small, academic, and micro presses, including self-published offerings. Throughout the centuries, writers such as Emily Dickinson, James Joyce, Walt Whitman, and Virginia Wolfe have taken the path of self-publishing rather than have their ideas forced into a corporate or sociopolitical mold.

The books and prose of the Hoffer Award are nominated by the people and judged by independent panels. Since its inception as the Writers Notes Award, the Hoffer Award has grown in prominence. Winners of the “Hoffer” are given prizes, honors, and worldwide media exposure, as well as being covered in the annual anthology, Best New Writing.

The Hoffer Award will continue to be a platform for and the champion of the independent voice.

Derrick Jensen named “Press Action Person of the Year”

From the Press Action website: “The recipient of this award was never in doubt. Derrick Jensen’s Endgame, released in late spring, was the best work of nonfiction in 2006. Given the significance of its subject matter and the urgency of Jensen’s message, Endgame is the most important book of the decade and could stand as the must-read book of our lifetimes. But be careful. The book is likely to send you into periods of despondency over the bleak future of the planet. But Jensen explains that if enough of us stand up and work together to fight the fascists, the crash won’t be as devastating. And the long struggle will eventually result in an explosive renewal of all forms of life on the planet.”

Read the full listing at Press Action website.