"Steven Pavlos Holmes offers a rich, refreshing, and much-needed collection of personal responses to climate change. Though the volume is slender, its selections of poetry and prosewritten over the past ten years by a variety of mostly lesserknown authorsprovide a tonal and emotional diversity that makes the collection accessible. I used the book to great success in a firstyear humanities seminar on climate change."
Stephen Siperstein, ISLE
"One puts down this bookwith a real sense of hope for the future. It is also a book worth dipping into from time to time, yielding enough variety to sustain a rereading, enough urgency in its many voices to remind us why we need to act, and enough wisdom in its insights to persuade us that we can each make a difference."
GREEN LETTERS: STUDIES IN ECOCRITICISM
"Amidst the current deluge of statistics about global warming, this book provides a refreshing look at how individuals are affected. This is a beautiful book to keep near, open at random, and share the words of gifted writers as they prepare for the coming changes."
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
"Holmes, a scholar in environmental humanities, has assembled a rich, varied collection of personal accounts and poems...An artistic and intimate approach to the problem that humanizes our concerns."
BOOKLIST
"Steven Holmes has gathered compelling testimonies about the ways our earthly home is changing in the short space of our own lifetimes. They beg us to pay attention and act. We are wise to heed these passionate voices.”
Chip Ward, author of Hope's Horizon
"These earnest and heartfelt poems, essays, and imaginings change our discourse from data to personal testimony, channeling care and concern.’ Maybe, just maybe, these authors who call us to unheroic’ action on life’s behalf’ will steer us away from tragedy and chaos. Emerging from denial is like moving from blindness to light.’ As the refrain from one writer puts it, Good Lord! Good luck!'"
Stephen Trimble, author of Bargaining for Eden: The Fight for the Last Open Spaces in America
"Facing the Change shares the stories of some of the many people in the US and the world who are already witnessing climate change here and now. They are giving us early warning signs; it's up to all of us to act now."
Mae Boeve, executive director of 350.org
"Facing the Change registers the impact of climate destabilization, not only on the sky above us and the earth beneath our feet, but also within our hearts. The voices in this eloquent and original book convey the dread and grief, the anger, but also the experiences of love and community that are intensified by the defining ecological challenge of our time."
John Elder, author of Reading the Mountains of Home, editor of The Norton Book of Nature
"These eloquent stories, essays, and poems by scores of 'emotional and cultural first responders' to the effects of climate change are sure to deliver a powerful wake-up call to anyone who has supposed that nothing an individual person can say or do will affect this impending disaster."
Lawrence Buell, author of The Environmental Imagination
"...the contributors to Facing the Change have begun to reveal the experiential heart of a planetary process. This is a truly important project."
Scott Slovic, editor of ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment
Steven Pavlos Holmes, Ph.D., is an independent scholar, editor, and educator in the environmental humanities, with a special interest in people's personal experiences of the natural world. His first book,The Young John Muir: An Environmental Biography, won the Modern Language Association's Prize for Independent Scholars, and he has presented papers and workshops at numerous academic and literary conferences. He earned a doctorate in American cultural history from Harvard University, has taught both at Harvard and at the Cambridge (Mass.) Center for Adult Education, and has worked on innovative projects with The Wilderness Society and Massachusetts Audubon’s Boston Nature Center. He currently lives, gardens, and watches birds in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, with his partner Carlene Pavlos and their cat, Millet.
