October 29, 2009
We are very pleased to see that Michelle Nijhuis’s article, “To Take Wilderness in Hand,” from the May/June 2008 Orion is included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2009, edited by Elizabeth Kolbert.
October 19, 2009
On October 17 three of us from Orion traveled to Newport, New Hampshire, to visit an extraordinary art exhibition, “H2O: Film on Water.” The show includes videos, paintings, photographs, and other installations – all focused on the theme of water—by over 60 artists.
Standing in the massive (18,000 square foot) space – part of the recently renovated Newport Mill – the viewer is surrounded and lifted by the light, movement, and sound emanating from dozens of pieces of art. The integration of the mill’s architecture and the art associated with the exhibition is beautiful, powerful, and timely.
The show was organized by Cynthia Reeves, a long-time friend of Orion who has connected the magazine’s staff with a number of visual artists whose work has subsequently appeared in Orion. Cynthia is the creative director of the Great River Arts Institute, and the owner of the Cynthia-Reeves gallery in Manhattan.
Pieces of the show are also on display at other locations along the Connecticut River, including the Brattleboro (Vermont) Museum, Great River Arts in Bellows Falls, VT, and the Spheris Gallery in Hanover, NH.
The exhibition will remain installed until November 7. We highly recommend that anyone in driving distance go and experience it for themselves.
Photos by Jamie Goldenberg and Chip Blake
posted by Chip
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filed under: Noteworthy Projects We've Heard About, Orion artists & writers
October 08, 2009
Curt White came by our offices on October 7. His new book, The Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money, and Crisis of Nature, is just out from Polipoint Press, and Curt was in town this week to speak to students at nearby Williams College. Curt told us the book actually grew out of two articles he did for Orion in 2007, “The Idols of Environmentalism” and “The Ecology of Work.” Generously, he has offered to sell books on Orion’s behalf at an October 8 speaking event in Williamstown, and donate the proceeds to Orion. I’ve read the whole thing through, and I’ll admit to being a big partisan in favor of Curt and his work, but I really do recommend it. Reading Curt reminds me of the Thoreau quote, “there are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.” Curt is the one who sees, understands, and can explain the root in terms that are entertaining, surprising, and deeply challenging to some of our core concepts as a society.—Hal
October 07, 2009
On October 5, executive editor Hal Clifford joined David Brancaccio, editor and lead correspondent for the PBS investigative reporting television show NOW, at the Triplex Theater in Great Barrington. The event was a screening of the NOW segment “On Thin Ice,” in which David and mountaineer Conrad Anker traveled to Montana and India to explore the implications of vanishing glaciers. The screening was cosponsored by the Berkshire International Film Festival and our local PBS affiliate, WGBY. After the show, David and Hal fielded questions about activism, the role of government, media literacy and more from a nearly full house afterward that probably could have gone all night if the moderator had let them.
September 03, 2009
The Orion Grassroots Network hosted its monthly Green Drinks gathering last night at Route 7 Grill and featured the work of nearby member group Sheffield Land Trust. Kathy Orlando (director, pictured) and her board and supporters turned out in numbers to educate Green Drinkers about SLT’s work and some of its exciting projects, like the Sheffield-Egremont Agricultural & Ecological Corridor. Learn more about that here. It was a little buggy by the time the crowd thinned out and the sun dipped to the horizon, but a good time was had.
posted by Erik Hoffner
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filed under: Other Orion Society program news
September 01, 2009
Both proposals for panels that Orion submitted to the annual Association of Writers & Writing Programs conference were accepted and will be presented at the AWP conference next April in Denver.
The panels are:
Writing the Mind’s Wild Geography
How is a sense of place both abstract and utterly grounded? The physical and the metaphysical worlds may not be so far apart after all—nature being various, mysterious, imperiled, and decisively not other. Gary Snyder has written of poetry as a creature of the wild mind that reflects back the wildness of nature. How then, in various genres, do the terrain of the imagination and the physical terrain meet? How do they work on each other? What happens when we engage both?
Moderator: Hannah Fries, Assistant Editor, Orion
Panelists: Maurice Manning, Indiana University; Ann Pancake, Pacific Luthern University; Lia Purpura, Loyola College; Alberto Rios, Arizona State University; and Pattiann Rogers.
What We Hate: Editorial Dos and Don’ts
You won’t find this in the FAQs. Get it straight from the source. Six distinguished magazine and book editors speak candidly about what they love and loathe and everything in between. What do editors really want from writers? What do they absolutely not want? If you’re positively sure you know the answers to these questions, then don’t come to this panel.
Moderator: H. Emerson Blake, Editor-in-Chief, Orion
Panelists: Katie Dublinski, Graywolf Press; Andrew Leland, The Believer; Denise Oswald, Soft Skull Press; Daniel Slager, Milkweed Editions; Rob Spillman, Tin House.
August 31, 2009
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Jim Carrier, author of “All You Can Eat” published in the March/April 2009 issue of Orion, Orion, Wisconsin.
posted by Scott Walker
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filed under: Orion noted elsewhere
August 24, 2009
Curtis White’s book (less than $12 in paper via Amazon) The Barbaric Heart: Faith, Money, and the Crisis of Nature has just been published. Parts were in Orion, accompanied by lively discussions. http://bit.ly/nKbg5
posted by Scott Walker
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filed under: Orion artists & writers
July 28, 2009
The Orion Grassroots Network successfully concluded its mini-fundraising campaign for member group Eastern Pennsylvania Coalition for Abandoned Mine Reclamation (EPCAMR), and now the school kids in their stream remediation classes will all have dry waders to wear while they study. This was a pilot of the Network’s idea for a Wish List, an effort to raise small pots of money for our Grassroots Network members via Orion’s visibility and channels, for items they can use for their missions but can’t prioritize due to budget restraints.
posted by Erik Hoffner
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filed under: Other Orion Society program news
July 07, 2009
2009 Orion Book Award winner Trespass: Living at the Edge of the Promised Land by Amy Irvine (McHarg) was named winner of the Colorado Book Award for creative nonfiction. Congratulations, Amy! For more information: http://thewesterner.blogspot.com/2009/07/norwood-novelist-wins-colorado-book.html
posted by Scott Walker
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filed under: Orion artists & writers
