“Why is someone in English working on climate change?" The short answer is that I wanted to move it out of abstraction, to bring it down to a local level in ways that real people experience it. Downscaling is a term climate change experts use to bring global forecasts down to community impacts. All of my books look at particular places but with a different kind of mapping. Using techniques of creative nonfiction—including narrative, scene, humor, and dialogue—I try to zoom in on large-scale processes happening at the local level, offering personalized depictions happening both on the ground and beneath the surface.
As I was writing Sudden Spring, I traveled up and over the Blue Ridge Mountains to get to the coast. During one of these journeys, the clouds stalled over the ridge and they looked like a shadow of their former much higher selves. On the beach, I stood on that pulverized rock and rubble from long ago, which was itself shifting and wearing away. If trends continue, we may have little to show for changes but the stories of these places, their efforts to adapt and endure. In seeking out these stories, I hope to bring these beautiful dying places to life.
As I was writing Sudden Spring, I traveled up and over the Blue Ridge Mountains to get to the coast. During one of these journeys, the clouds stalled over the ridge and they looked like a shadow of their former much higher selves. On the beach, I stood on that pulverized rock and rubble from long ago, which was itself shifting and wearing away. If trends continue, we may have little to show for changes but the stories of these places, their efforts to adapt and endure. In seeking out these stories, I hope to bring these beautiful dying places to life.