Overview

"A Foreword Reviews Books of the Year Award Finalist ""These eloquent stories, essays, and poems by scores of 'emotional and cultural first responders' to the effects of climate change are sure to deliver a powerful wake-up call to anyone..."" --LAWRENCE BUELL Facing the Change: Personal Encounters with Global Warming is a new kind of book about climate change. Instead of experts talking at us, this innovative literary collection shares the voices of fellow citizens struggling to make sense of the concrete changes taking place in our world today. Instead of scientific facts and predictions, this book offers personal essays, poems, and short stories expressing what's going on in people's lives, hearts, and dreams. Instead of leaving readers guilty and disempowered, this book will help us all to begin to work through the full range of emotions--confusion, fear, sorrow, anger, and realistic hope--that we must face in confronting the crisis. Showcasing the voices of a wide range of authors--from prize-winning writers and poets such as Roxana Robinson, Audrey Schulman, and Barbara Crooker, to regular citizens and young people--Facing the Change offers a new opportunity for moving past denial and despair to awareness and action."

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9781937226275

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Reviews

Steven Pavlos Holmes offers a rich, refreshing, and much-needed collection of personal responses to climate change. Though the volume is slender, its selections of poetry and prose--written over the past ten years by a variety of mostly lesser-known authors--provide a tonal and emotional diversity that makes the collection accessible. --ISLE One puts down this book...with a real sense of hope for the future. It is also a book worth dipping into from time to time, yielding enough variety to sustain a re-reading, enough urgency in its many voices to remind us why we need to act, and enough wisdom in its insights to persuade us that we can each make a difference. --GREEN LETTERS: STUDIES IN ECOCRITICISM Amidst the current deluge of statistics about global warming, this book provides a refreshing look at how individuals are affected. This is a beautiful book to keep near, open at random, and share the words of gifted writers as they prepare for the coming changes. --PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Holmes, a scholar in environmental humanities, has assembled a rich, varied collection of personal accounts and poems...An artistic and intimate approach to the problem that humanizes our concerns. --BOOKLIST Steven Holmes has gathered compelling testimonies about the ways our earthly home is changing in the short space of our own lifetimes. They beg us to pay attention and act. We are wise to heed these passionate voices. --CHIP WARD, author of Hope's Horizon These earnest and heartfelt poems, essays, and imaginings change our discourse from data to personal testimony, channeling 'care and concern.' Maybe, just maybe, these authors who call us to 'unheroic' action 'on life's behalf' will steer us away from tragedy and chaos. 'Emerging from denial is like moving from blindness to light.' As the refrain from one writer puts it, 'Good Lord! Good luck!' --STEPHEN TRIMBLE, author of Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America Facing the Change shares the stories of some of the many people in the US and the world who are already witnessing climate change here and now. They are giving us early warning signs; it's up to all of us to act now. --MAE BOEVE, executive director of 350.org Facing the Change registers the impact of climate destabilization, not only on the sky above us and the earth beneath our feet, but also within our hearts. The voices in this eloquent and original book convey the dread and grief, the anger, but also the experiences of love and community that are intensified by the defining ecological challenge of our time. --JOHN ELDER, author of Reading the Mountains of Home, editor of The Norton Book of Nature These eloquent stories, essays, and poems by scores of 'emotional and cultural first responders' to the effects of climate change are sure to deliver a powerful wake-up call to anyone who has supposed that nothing an individual person can say or do will affect this impending disaster. --LAWRENCE BUELL, author of The Environmental Imagination .. .the contributors to Facing the Change have begun to reveal the experiential heart of a planetary process. This is a truly important project. --SCOTT SLOVIC, editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

Steven Pavlos Holmes offers a rich, refreshing, and much-needed collection of personal responses to climate change. Though the volume is slender, its selections of poetry and prose--written over the past ten years by a variety of mostly lesser-known authors--provide a tonal and emotional diversity that makes the collection accessible. --ISLE One puts down this book...with a real sense of hope for the future. It is also a book worth dipping into from time to time, yielding enough variety to sustain a re-reading, enough urgency in its many voices to remind us why we need to act, and enough wisdom in its insights to persuade us that we can each make a difference. --GREEN LETTERS: STUDIES IN ECOCRITICISM Amidst the current deluge of statistics about global warming, this book provides a refreshing look at how individuals are affected. This is a beautiful book to keep near, open at random, and share the words of gifted writers as they prepare for the coming changes. --PUBLISHERS WEEKLY Holmes, a scholar in environmental humanities, has assembled a rich, varied collection of personal accounts and poems...An artistic and intimate approach to the problem that humanizes our concerns. --BOOKLIST Steven Holmes has gathered compelling testimonies about the ways our earthly home is changing in the short space of our own lifetimes. They beg us to pay attention and act. We are wise to heed these passionate voices. --CHIP WARD, author of Hope's Horizon These earnest and heartfelt poems, essays, and imaginings change our discourse from data to personal testimony, channeling 'care and concern.' Maybe, just maybe, these authors who call us to 'unheroic' action 'on life's behalf' will steer us away from tragedy and chaos. 'Emerging from denial is like moving from blindness to light.' As the refrain from one writer puts it, 'Good Lord! Good luck!' --STEPHEN TRIMBLE, author of Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America Facing the Change shares the stories of some of the many people in the US and the world who are already witnessing climate change here and now. They are giving us early warning signs; it's up to all of us to act now. --MAE BOEVE, executive director of 350.org Facing the Change registers the impact of climate destabilization, not only on the sky above us and the earth beneath our feet, but also within our hearts. The voices in this eloquent and original book convey the dread and grief, the anger, but also the experiences of love and community that are intensified by the defining ecological challenge of our time. --JOHN ELDER, author of Reading the Mountains of Home, editor of The Norton Book of Nature These eloquent stories, essays, and poems by scores of 'emotional and cultural first responders' to the effects of climate change are sure to deliver a powerful wake-up call to anyone who has supposed that nothing an individual person can say or do will affect this impending disaster. --LAWRENCE BUELL, author of The Environmental Imagination .. .the contributors to Facing the Change have begun to reveal the experiential heart of a planetary process. This is a truly important project. --SCOTT SLOVIC, editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

Author Information

STEVEN PAVLOS HOLMES, Ph.D., is an independent scholar, editor, and educator in the environmental humanities, with a special interest in people's personal experiences of the natural world. His first book, The Young John Muir: An Environmental Biography, won the Modern Language Association's Prize for Independent Scholars, and he has presented papers and workshops at numerous academic and literary conferences. He earned a doctorate in American cultural history from Harvard University, has taught both at Harvard and at the Cambridge (Mass.) Center for Adult Education, and has worked on innovative projects with The Wilderness Society and Massachusetts Audubon's Boston Nature Center. He currently lives, gardens, and watches birds in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, with his partner Carlene Pavlos and their cat, Millet.

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