Scott Russell Sanders is the author of twenty books of fiction and nonfiction, including A Private History of Awe and A Conservationist Manifesto. The best of his essays from the past thirty years, plus nine new essays, are collected in Earth Works, published in 2012 by Indiana University Press. Among his honors are the Lannan Literary Award, the John Burroughs Essay Award, the Mark Twain Award, the Cecil Woods Award for Nonfiction, the Eugene and Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award, and fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2012 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His latest book is The Way of Imagination: Essays, a novel, published in 2020.
Scott Russell Sanders

Feature

At the Gates of Deep Darkness
My son has stage four cancer. I can write the sentence, and I can explain the diagnosis, but I cannot wholly believe it. Reason tells me that Jesse is likely to Continue reading
Feature

The Taste of
the Sea
A selkie takes great risk in transformation. Continue reading
Feature

Breaking the Spell of Money
ANYONE WHO PAYS ATTENTION to the state of the planet realizes that all natural systems on which human life depends are deteriorating, and they are doing so largely because of human Continue reading
Feature

Mind in the Forest
THE SETTING OF THIS ESSAY by Scott Russell Sanders is the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, a 15,800-acre research area in the Cascade Mountains of Oregon. Research conducted at the Andrews Continue reading
Feature

Stillness
THROUGH THE AISLE of waving woodland sunflowers and purple ironweed, I approach a cedar hut where I plan to sit quietly for a few hours, gathering the scattered pieces of myself. Continue reading