Writer Profile
Books & Essays
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Title:
The Woods Stretched for Miles: New Nature Writing from the South
Date Published:
University of Georgia Press 1999Description:
The Woods Stretched for Miles gathers essays about southern landscape and nature from nineteen writers with geographic or ancestral ties to the region. Marilou Awiatka's chapter is entitled "Daydreaming Primal Space."
From the savannas of south Florida through the hardwood uplands of Mississippi to the coastal rivers of the Carolinas and the high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, the range in geography covered is equally broad. With insight and eloquence, these diverse talents take up similar themes: environmental restoration, the interplay between individual and community, the definition of wildness in an area transformed by human activity, and the meaning of our reactions to the natural world.
Readers will treasure the passionate and intelligent honorings of land and nature offered by this rich anthology. With the publication of The Woods Stretched for Miles, southern voices establish their abiding place in the ever-popular nature writing genre.
Book Review #1:
"This is an important book?the first of its kind exclusively on the Southeast. It should appeal to general readers who wish to read about the genre in the Southeast, about the long and complex relationship between American culture and nature, and also about controversial environmental issues in the region."
?John Murray, editor of American Nature Writing
Book Review #2:
"I am delighted with the very concept of this anthology of Southern nature writing. There are dozens and dozens of recent scholarly books on environmental literature and anthologies of nonfiction nature writing, nature poetry, and environmental writing in general, including a number of regionally oriented collections. But, so far, other than Molly Westling's ecocritical studies of Southern fiction, few of these recent publications are explicitly devoted to Southern environmental literature. For this reason, there is a significant void that the The Woods Stretched for Miles is intended to fill?and I think it fills the void quite well."
?Scott Slovic, author of Being in the World: An Environmental Reader for Writers
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Title:
Selu: Seeking the Corn-Mother's Wisdom
Date Published:
Fulcrum Publishing 1994Book Review #1:
"A book so wise and true, it might have been written by the Corn Mother herself. And maybe it was." Alice Walker
Book Review #2:
Rooted in the stories of the Cherokee Corn Mother, Selu, and of the teacher of hunters, Awi Usdi (Little Deer), these stories, essays, drawings, and poems revolve around the fundamental Indian concepts of respect and balance. Awiakta, who grew up in the postwar community of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, the product of Cherokee and Scotch-Irish Appalachian roots, tells how the stories of Selu and Awi Usdi can be applied in all areas of life, from political activism to interpersonal relations. Touching on issues like the Tellico Dam controversy (when the Cherokee's ancient capital was flooded), the reunion of the Eastern and Oklahoma Cherokee, science and technology, government, and diversity, this wide-ranging collection is occasionally repetitious but offers true insights into Native American philosophies and how to apply them to contemporary problems. -- Library Journal