credit: Ruth Sanders reviews of Earth Works, A Private History of Awe, and Conservationist

During a residency at Central College in Pella, Iowa, this spring, I was interviewed for KNIA/KRLS radio by journalist Bob Leonard. You can listen to the 23-minute interview here.

A long, appreciative review of my latest book, Earth Works, appears in the spring 2013 issue of Terrain.org. The reviewer, Simmons Buntin, is also the editor of Terrain.

In 2012, Indiana University Press published a volume of my selected essays entitled Earth Works, which includes twenty-one essays from my previous books and nine that have never appeared in book form. See reviews here. An interview about the book was published in Englewood Review in February.

After greatly enjoying the "Wilderness Plots" collaboration, I have been involved in two new projects with musicians. Composer Lauren Bernofsky has written the music and I have written the libretto for a children's opera called Mooch the Magnificent inspired by my novel The Engineer of Beasts. The show opera is being performed by musicians from Indiana University in schools and libraries in southern Indiana, as well as in schools in Illinois and Missouri.

I have also written a series of new short stories featuring my recurrent character Gordon Milk, for shows I'm performing along with singer/songwriters Carrie Newcomer and Krista Detor, and writer Philip Gulley.

The Wooster Book Company has brought out a new edition of my children's book The Floating House, their fourth Sanders reprint.

My book Hunting for Hope inspired an eight-week series of sermons and study groups at Countryside Community United Church of Christ in Omaha, Nebraska. Each Sunday evening during that span, the website Darkwood Brew broadcast an hour-long program centered around one of the sources of hope discussed in my book, and featuring a video interview with me. You will find a 15-minute excerpt from my interview here.

On June 24, 2011, the original cast of the "Wilderness Plots" show reunited for a performance on the campus of Indiana University. A film of the concert, made by our local PBS station, WTIU, premiered in the fall, and the film is being released nationally by PBS in 2012. You can see a preview of the film here. The DVD can be ordered here.

My essay "Breaking the Spell of Money" appeared in the July-August issue of Orion. You can read the essay here and join an on-line discussion here.

Recent awards: 2012 election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. 2011 Cecil Woods Award for Nonfiction from the Fellowship of Southern Writers. National Winner of the 2010 Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, sponsored by the Indianapolis-Marion County Library Foundation.

A Conservationist Manifesto was published in April 2009, on Earth Day, by Indiana University Press. The book addresses what I take to be the greatest challenge facing our society, which is to shift from a culture based on consumption to a culture based on caretaking. What would a truly sustainable economy look like? What responsibilities do we bear for the well-being of future generations? What responsibilities do we bear toward Earth’s millions of other species? In a time of ecological calamity and widespread human suffering, how should we imagine a good life? A Conservationist Manifesto seeks answers to these pressing questions, and more, in writing that’s impelled by a sense of place and a sense of hope.

You can view here a reading I gave from Conservationist, along with my discussion of the book and responses to audience questions.

The fall 2009 issue of Terrain.org carries a long, thoughtful review of Conservationist by editor Simmons Buntin, who moves outward from a discussion of the book to consider the challenges facing any effort to address serious environmental and social justice issues in the U.S. You'll find the review here.

An interview focusing on the book appears Grist.org, a website devoted to understanding our current predicament and envisioning the path toward a humane and durable way of life. You will find another recent interview here, and reviews of Conservationist here.

A Private History of Awe, published in a cloth edition by Farrar, Straus & Giroux in 2006, and reprinted in paperback in 2007, is now out of print. I have a few copies of the original hardcover edition for sale. Inquire through the "Contact" link if you would be interested in ordering a copy. Awe is also available as an eBook. To read my short description of this book, click here.

Four of my earlier books have been brought out in revised editions by The Wooster Book Company—Wilderness Plots, a collection of brief tales about the settlement of the Ohio Valley; Warm as Wool, a storybook for children about a pioneer family; and Aurora Means Dawn, another children's storybook, this one about a family from Connecticut that homesteads in the Ohio wilderness in 1800; and The Floating House, a storybook about a family navigating a flatboat down the Ohio River from Pittsburgh in 1815 and setting in southern Indiana. Ask for any of these books at your local bookstore or contact The Wooster Book Company online at www.woosterbook.com or by phone at 800-982-6651. You will find brief descriptions of Wilderness Plots, Warm as Wool, and Aurora Means Dawn here.