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Learning to Love the Brazos with John Graves

With some little local knowledge now in mind, I too may, day by day, attune myself to the Way, How ever imperfectly I go about What I am striving to…

The Power of Place: Northern Exposure and South Side

Places shape us and provide the contours of our communities. And despite the grittier dramas, the grip that a place has on us is not always all about past crimes…

Who is America For? A Review of Cheap Land Colorado

eading Cheap Land Colorado makes you wonder how we can make more space for human flourishing among the poor and on the edges of society? Conover’s approach to the San…
February 20, 2023

The Power of Place: Wildsam Field Guides

The success of Wildsam is a reminder that many people want to experience the real. Every day we are marketed generic and homogenous products and destinations, but there is an…

A Man From Nowhere

I am not now lamenting my station, which is a kind of existential loneliness, though at times I do. I’m putting it down in writing because I know for certain…

The Power of Place: Huckberry’s Dirt

Huckberry’s success speaks to a desire for adventure and relationship with the land within the American public. People want to go backpacking and hiking and ride their motorcycles across the…

All the Ways You Can Stay

So leave if you must, but perhaps not today. Stop and consider all the ways you can stay.

Paterson and Poetic Fidelity

Creative fidelity is attuned to, and draws out, the richness in people and things. It calls for awareness and attentive seeing. In the end, Paterson is a film about such…
Steven Knepper
December 2, 2022

Selling 3301

Today, many in our society seem to want change for its own sake. I hope a different spirit continues among those neighbors and the street remains a neighborhood as it…

The This-ness of This Place: Introducing Belle Point Press and Mid/South Anthology

Raised in Eastern Oklahoma with roots older than living memory in the Natural State, we look forward to supporting new authors while connecting readers with the long thread of our…
September 12, 2022

Reality’s Bite: Responding to the Reality Privilege Argument

Are those who question transhumanist progress or Metaverse predictions just knee-jerk Luddites whose visceral reactions are worthy of only a patronizing pat on the head for not seeing their own…
August 26, 2022

The Only Bonds to Be Found: A Review of The Most Beautiful Place on Earth

An imagination like his, fictions like his – born from affection – may not provide us with data or answers but may help us feel “somehow more substantial and less…
Seth Wieck
August 5, 2022

Forget Red vs. Blue, America is Cactus vs. Philodendron

Is there a direct causal connection between America’s embrace of succulents and semi-succulents as houseplants-of-choice and the conspicuous mass movement of Americans to states with the least amount of rainfall?…

Remembering Irving Petite, “Issaquah’s Thoreau”

Today the man described as “Issaquah’s Thoreau” is largely forgotten. His books have been out of print for years and the anniversary of what would have been his 100th birthday…

Living When We Are: A Review of Brisbane

Vodolazkin's novels do for Time what Wendell Berry does for Space: We can't just live where we are, we have to live when we are, too. So thanks to Vodolazkin…

Actions Speak Louder than Words, or a Midwestern Accent

On return trips to Illinois, or when talking to relatives on the phone, I can tell the difference. Life is a little slower where I grew up, and the people…
March 31, 2022

Tending a Rooted Congregation: A Review of The Power of Place

If “church” is the body of Christ in its local manifestation, where each and every member is connected to one another and everyone knows each other’s names and stories, have…

When Foot Voting is Necessary: A Review of Free to Move

It would be nice if Somin would see migration (national and international) as a remedy for intolerable situations, a lesser evil, not a desirable thing in itself. Those who aren’t…
January 26, 2022

Scenes of Arrival, Stories of Home

Here are three novels about three places in the world. Each conveys not just a perfunctory setting but a web of topography, livelihoods, pastimes, and lore. And in each the…
December 27, 2021

Buddy from Belfast: Pondering How to Belong

Belfast is a lovely movie for remembering the power that places have in defining who we are and the beauty of belonging well, even to a broken place.
December 22, 2021

The Road Taken

Sometimes an important change becomes evident only in retrospect - not while it’s happening across quiet broken days alone in a house while autumn succumbs to shadow and cold.
November 5, 2021

Making Meaning in the Haunted Midwest

Those of us committed to the Midwest and its literature can and should mourn the damages done to our region by our habits of transience. But we must also recognize,…

Tending the Soil of our Homes: Gracy Olmstead’s Paean to Roots

At the heart of Gracy Olmstead's book is the conviction that roots do not just serve the individual person or plant—they also are vital to the health of one’s soil,…

Ravining

I have spent considerable time in ravines, drawn to them by an appetite for domestic exploration: though they worry me, I have also been drawn to them; I traverse the…
Matthew Miller
January 11, 2021