Hearth - A Global Conversation on Identity, Community, and Place

A multicultural anthology about the enduring importance and shifting associations of the hearth in our world.

List of contents

Contents

W. S. Merwin, Rain Light

Annick Smith and Susan O'Connor, Preface: Keeping the Fire Alive

Barry Lopez, Foreword: The Unhearthed

HEART

Natasha Trethewey, Meditation at Decatur Square

Bill McKibben, Heaarth

Luis Alberto Urrea, Codex Hogar

Andrew Lam, Enchantment

Yvonne Owuor, The Fire in Ten

Chigozie Obioma, We Will Wait for You

Pico Iyer, My Mobile Home

Gerður Kristný, Völuspá

Alisa Ganieva, Hearth's in the Highlands

Zoë Strachan, Small Fires

Jane Hirshfield, The Fire

EARTH

Pualani Kanahele, Kilauea Caldera, My Hearth

Sara Baume, Home Waters

Carl Safina, Soul on the Tide

Sherman Alexie, Ode

Gretel Ehrlich, To Live

Intizar Husain, New Home

Kim Cheng Boey, Home Is Elsewhere: Reflections of a Returnee

Kavery Nambisan, The Rent Not Paid

Frank Stewart, What It Will Bear

Terry Tempest Williams and Sarah Hedden, A Tea Ceremony for Public Lands

Ameena Hussein, A Staircase with a View

ART

Sebastião Salgado, from Genesis (portfolio)

Anthony Birch, Colours

Christopher Merrill, Hearth

Mihaela Moscaliuc, The Ink of Cemeteries

Debra Magpie Earling, The Great Big Rickety World My Father Saved Me From

Geffrey Davis, Even in the Loneliness of the Canyon

Angie Cruz, Dream Shelter

William Kittredge, Refuge

Mark Tredinnick, The Temple of the Word

Mary Evelyn Tucker, From Home to Cosmos

W. S. Merwin, The Other House

About the author

Annick Smith is the author of several books, including Homestead, In This We Are Native, Big Bluestem, and most recently Crossing the Plains with Bruno. She produced the prize-winning feature Heartland, and was a founding board member of Robert Redford's Sundance Institute. Her travel and nature writing, short stories, and essays have appeared in journals such as Audubon, Outside, Islands, Travel + Leisure, Orion, the New York Times, Story, and National Geographic Traveler and have been widely anthologized. She was also the editor of Headwaters: Montana Writers on Water & Wilderness, and coeditor with Susan O'Connor of The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie. She lives in Bonner, Montana.

Susan O'Connor is an environmental and arts advocate. She has served on the boards of several art museums, including the Menil in Houston, Texas. She has also been a board member of the Orion Society and the American Prairie Reserve. She cofounded several nonprofits, including Pacific Writers Connection, Ala Kukui: Hana Retreat, Ohana Makamae, and Families First both in Boston and Missoula. She was coeditor with Annick Smith of The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie. She lives in Missoula, Montana.

Summary

“Some of my favorite people on Earth are in this book, dear writers and grand spirits.” —ANNIE DILLARD

Foreword

Now in paperback newsletter campaign via the publisher to nonfiction lists of more than 20,000 contacts

Reading Group Guide available on Edelweiss and downloadable via publisher website

Collaboration with Montana Humanities on statewide book club promotional campaign, with potential for program adoption in other states

Promotion to coeditors’ mailing lists to reach influential communities in arts and environmental literature

Select events coordinated with contributors across the United States

Additional text

Praise for Hearth

“A simmering collection of 32 provocative and stunning works . . . Ultimately, this profound and radiant volume reveals that hearths take many forms, including a book.”—Booklist

“[A] remarkable new collection . . . ‘We live within a blaze of transience both inevitable and complete,’ writes Jane Hirshfield. Hearth captures both the evanescence of that blaze and its enduring power to heal us.”—World Literature Today

“Astounding, gorgeous . . . From front cover to back, Hearth is a visually and intellectually stimulating collection, always beautiful, but equal parts uplifting and heartbreaking.”—Missoulian

”A wide-ranging anthology devoted to the idea and symbol of the hearth, a traditional centerpiece of the home, the collection avoids nostalgia and deals squarely with how community and place can be approached and enacted in a world torn by immigration crises, climate change, and inequality.”—Stephen Sparks, Literary Hub

“Here is a book for our real or imagined hearths, prompting us to discover and redefine them. . . . Hearth serves as a guide and a tribute to our collective struggles and the many possibilities of home.”—The Arkansas International

“Thought-provoking, meditative, mournful, and comforting for readers who seek a connection to purpose and meaning, the anthology acts as a hearth of its own.”—Publishers Weekly

“The wisdom, compassion, and humanity in these pages are powerful medicine for our time. It’s not necessary to begin at the beginning, but I did. I started with W. S. Merwin’s beautiful poem and the rest of the essays seeped in where Merwin made his skillful soul-opening into my heart. By the time I put this gorgeous collection of writing down, I was flooded with both the balm of compassion and instructions for how to go forward, both.”
—Alexandra Fuller, author of Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight

“Some of my favorite people on Earth are in this book, dear writers and grand spirits at whose hearths I long to sit. And there are writers who are new to me, fascinating people whose lives vivify how very much about human existence still remains to be learned.”—Annie Dillard

“The first hearth, I suppose, before humans controlled fire, was the body heat of a she-wolf or a bear, curled in her den, offering nurture to shivering pups or cubs. These fine writers take it from there. Wolves don’t need fire, as Barry notes. But they and we all need something like it—a focus, a refuge, a source.”—David Quammen

Praise for The Wide Open

“From the pens of writers such as Judy Blunt, Rick Bass, Thomas McGuane, Barry Lopez, Richard Ford, Gretel Ehrlich, Peter Matthiesen, Richard Hugo, and James Galvin and through the stark lenses of photographers Lee Friedlander, Lois Conner, and Geoffrey James, we deeply inhabit the American prairie, a seemingly immutable place of hard-scrabble ranches, rivers, bears, birds, and wolves—a land so patiently alive we might miss it.”—Bookforum

“A literate portrait of the prairie and the animals and folks who cooperatively attempt to make it home.”—Montana Quarterly

“A superb evocation of the prairie and its life.”—ForeWord

“Using photographs, fiction, and nonfiction, the editors have skillfully assembled a complex portrayal of the West’s high, dry, and cold plains into a beautiful book.”—Orion

“A beautiful memoir of the short-grass prairie of the northern Great Plains, which has channeled its voice through the writers and photographers found within the book.”—Bloomsbury Review

“An essential anthology that celebrates the voice and spirit of the prairie. Anthologies can be hit or miss—this collection of poetry, prose, and photographs is right on the mark.”—Great Plains Quarterly

Product details

• Assisted by: Susan O’Connor (Editor), O’Connor Susan (Editor), Susan O'Connor (Editor), O'Connor Susan (Editor), Annick Smith (Editor), Smith Annick (Editor)
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 13.08.2019
• EAN: 9781571313805
• ISBN: 978-1-57131-380-5
• Illustrations: Six black and white photographs by Sebastio Salgado
• Subjects: Fiction > Poetry, drama; Non-fiction book > Nature, technology > Nature: general, reference works; LITERARY COLLECTIONS / Essays, LITERARY COLLECTIONS / General, Nature & the natural world: general interest, Narrative theme: Environmental issues