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Unabridged Podcast

Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation, edited by Christopher Kondrich, Lucy Spelman, and Susan Tacent

12/29/2024

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Thanks to partners NetGalley and University of Minnesota Press for the digital ARC of Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation, edited by Christopher Kondrich, Lucy Spelman, and Susan Tacent.

As an English teacher at a school with an environmental focus, where I’m constantly exploring the ways that literature can fuel a deeper understanding of science, I was immediately intrigued by the premise of Creature Needs: Writers Respond to the Science of Animal Conservation, an anthology of essays, short stories, and poetry. Editors Christopher Kondrich, Lucy Spelman, and Susan Tacent organized their collection around six basic needs that all creatures share: air, food, water, shelter, room to move, and each other. Each need has its own devoted section.

The real hook is what comes next: within each section, the individual creative pieces are inspired by peer-reviewed articles that delve into specific conservation needs or concerns. For example, the article “Bumble Bee Species Distributions and Habitat Associations in the Midwestern USA, a Region of Declining Diversity” inspired Maggie Smith’s lovely poem “A Single Worker,” and “A Systematic Review of Potential Habitat Suitability for the Jaguar Panthera onca in Central Arizona and New Mexico, USA” fueled Sofia Samatar’s essay “The Sublime Is a Foreign Species.”

With each new piece, I eagerly anticipated the way that a given contributor would use the statistics or facts within an article as a springboard for their own reflections, often melding personal anecdotes with considerations of the interconnectedness of the lives of these creatures and our own experiences.

As with all anthologies, some of the pieces resonated more with me than others did, whether because of writing style or because of the way the creator navigated the bridge between the article’s objectively described focus and the subjective truths that often hit more deeply. As a whole, however, Creature Needs was just the text I hoped it would be.

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Corie Adjmi's LIFE AND OTHER SHORTCOMINGS - A Beautiful Collection of Linked Stories

7/7/2020

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Thanks to Corie Adjmi for the ARC of Life and Other Shortcomings in exchange for an honest review. The book will be published on Tuesday, August 4.

Corie Adjmi’s short story collection Life and Other Shortcomings circles around a central group of friends who we meet in the first story. “Dinner Conversation” introduces three couples whose ties originated in different ways: childhood friendships, new meetings, parenthood. The connections seem tenuous at times, but as Adjmi builds her collection, she reveals the subtle whims of all relationships, the way that friendships can be cemented or shattered in a moment.

Adjmi’s writing is spare and beautiful. There’s a subtlety that means the power of each story sneaks up on the reader, building to climaxes whose impact can take time and thought to process. These epiphanies hit harder because of their gentleness: they aren’t huge, obvious moments but instead minute shifts of perception.

Even without the power of the stories, I would have loved this book because of the writing. I found myself digging into my tin of book darts on nearly every page, eager to mark each perfect turn of phrase. I was enchanted by Adjmi’s exploration of the transforming definitions of parenthood; of the truth of what holds couples together; of the rules that we’re willing to accept and those we feel compelled to challenge. The idea that we cherish most those things that are denied to us permeates the collection.

There’s joy in finding the connections between the stories, in completing the puzzle of each character, that stayed with me through the book. I found Life and Other Shortcomings to be a beautiful, satisfying reading experience, and I absolutely look forward to devouring Adjmi’s next book.

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    I'm Jen Moyers, co-host of the Unabridged Podcast and an English teacher.

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