Enter…Substack.

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Hello, friends and future friends.

Welcome to Peregrinations

I write with an invitation. I hope you’ll subscribe and join me for my new Substack, Peregrinations, a place for those who love the natural world. Whose hearts crack a little at its beauty and wonders, and also at its destruction. Those who want to understand how this glorious and broken planet works, and how we might help make it work better, for everyone. I’ve been covering the environment as a journalist for nearly twenty years, writing for magazines and newspapers around the world, as well as a book about how ordinary Indians are facing environmental crises. Check out my About page for more. But Peregrinations is something else….

The world gets bigger, and smaller, all at the same time.

But our hunger for connection continues unabated. I used to amass stacks of letters, pen on paper. Then there was a zine (rrrrl girlz!). Then a blog. Then Twitter, which felt in the early days like the temporary autonomous zone that it could have been, but is now a dark hole of misery run by a man who might actually be a machine. So let’s try coming together here, on Substack. You. And me. An itty bitty way to stay connected. For now, it’ll be occasional and free.

What to expect:

  • latest pieces and unpublished oldies
  • advance notice of classes and events
  • recommended readings
  • craft tips on creative nonfiction and publishing
  • photos
  • outtakes from reporting trips that don’t quite fit the final piece, but carry a story of their own
  • and birds, likely raptors, cutting through the sky, leaving a slipstream all their own

 

From the shelf of inspiration in my office. Art by Danica Novgorodoff.

Writing this Warming World

From climate change to climate catastrophe to existential crisis, the vocabulary of our changing planet is quickly escalating in urgency. Writers are responding. Join me this November as I lead an Off Assignment Master Series class. Each week we’ll have a guest author join us, including the incredibly talented writers Emily Raboteau, Elizabeth Rush, J. Drew Lanham & Helen Macdonald. Registration is open now. Join us live or asynchronously. Scholarships are available, and just reach out to me if you want a discount code. I have a few left to give out. Register for Writing this Warming World here! And please spread the word to anyone else who might be interested.

Summer of Great Books

The summer of 2024 was a summer of superb reading experiences. Just a few of my favorites:

Vote!

When Joe Biden withdrew from the US presidential race this summer, it seemed like the biggest story in the world, but something else happened that Sunday. It was the hottest day in recorded history, followed by another record-breaker. Expect more. Now the race is between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris, and the difference between the two candidates couldn’t be more stark. Read this piece from Yale Climate Connections, then read science journalist Michelle Nijhuis’s Substack piece on reading through Project 2025. Register. Vote. Act.

Socials:

I’m done with Twitter. Please come find me at Bluesky: @meerasub.bsky.social and Instagram: @meerasub.   But more than anything, I hope you’ll SUBSCRIBE!

Hope to see you back here, soon!

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Covering Climate Now Award

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Super honored to join so many other amazing journalists honored with Covering Climate Now Awards yesterdayy! Solutions! Thanks to the great editors at The New Yorker, photographer Supranav Dash & local journalist Elizabeth Mani, the team behind the story—India’s Quest to Build the largest Solar Farms—about the world’s third largest solar farm, located in Karnataka, India.

Here’s what the judges said:

Through deep interviews with peanut farmers, school teachers, government officials, and vulnerable Dalit women — who’ve lost access to farmland they cultivated for generations — Subramanian creates a textured examination of the tradeoffs and power imbalances that the green transition might portend. “Fascinating,” judges said, Subramanian’s work quickly hooks audiences, and her “lovely writing” keeps them reading.

Thanks also to the judges for their time and Covering Climate Now for amplifying these stories that span our warming planet. Check out all the wonderful winning work HERE.

#journalism #climatechange #climatecrisis #awards #amplify

Writing this Warming World

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**Join me and four brilliant writers this fall! Registration open now! **

From climate change to climate catastrophe to existential crisis, the vocabulary of our changing planet is quickly escalating in urgency. Writers are responding. Whether you are just finding your way into this space or have been writing about the natural world for years, this class is designed to help you find the right words to meet this moment of metamorphosis. How do we bring the personal and planetary together? How do we render beauty in a world aflame? In what ways is the state of the planet changing the shape of our lives? As chroniclers of the natural world under transformation, how does our ink find the fine line between hope and despair, or should it?

Led by author and journalist Meera Subramanian, this four-week course explores writing the twinned experience of climate grief and fierce love for the planet. Conversations with guest authors Emily Raboteau, Elizabeth Rush, J. Drew Lanham, and Helen Macdonald will shed light on the unique challenges that nature writers and climate journalists face. Learn how these five exemplary writers who cross genres in the climate space today are navigating common conundrums.

We’ll look closely at the work of our guest authors to deepen our understanding of best practices in portraying the physical world as it changes. We’ll analyze craft but also make space for thornier issues such as political realities and flagging morale. We’ll discuss the use of braided essays and other structural devices that are especially useful to storytellers and journalists in this niche, and get practical about how to deepen narratives with research and reporting.

Students will get weekly writing prompts and assignments to catalyze their climate writing, giving you the tools you need to work towards a solid draft essay by the end of the course. Although we will not be workshopping, there will be ample opportunities to ask questions and share struggles and insights. Participants will also receive a suggested reading list to serve as inspiration beyond the last class, as well as a list of outlets that publish climate-related writing or that are especially interested in stories with a strong element of place or nature.

REGISTER HERE

*

This course will take place on Zoom on Sundays, November 3-24 from 12 to 2 p.m. EST. Participants will receive a Zoom link prior to the course as well as a recording of the course afterwards. We cannot offer refunds once the course has begun. Please email [email protected] with any questions.

A limited number of scholarships may be available for this course; please send a brief statement outlining how and why a scholarship would impact your ability to attend to [email protected] by October 14 and we’ll get back to you by October 21.

*

Off Assignment’s Masters’ Series courses are unique four-session courses on in-depth writing topics that harness the perspectives and craft tactics of a lead instructor plus celebrated guest lecturers, such that participating writers gain a wealth of input while benefiting from the cohesive leadership of one renowned writer in a particular niche of nonfiction.

Related show

  • Author: Meera Subramanian
  • Tour: Teaching/Workshops
  • Date: November 3, 2024 - November 24, 2024
  • Time: 12:00pm
  • Venue: Online
  • City: Everywhere
  • Country: United States
  • Admission: $400 USD
  • More information
  • Notes: WRITING THIS WARMING WORLD. From climate change to climate catastrophe to existential crisis, the vocabulary of our changing planet is quickly escalating in urgency. Writers are responding. Join journalist Meera Subramanian for this four-week course that explores writing the twinned experience of climate grief and fierce love for the planet. Conversations with guest authors Emily Raboteau, Elizabeth Rush, J. Drew Lanham, and Helen Macdonald will shed light on the unique challenges that nature writers and climate journalists face. This course will take place on Zoom on Sundays, November 3-24 from 12 to 2 p.m. EST.

Consider the Vulture

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Line of vultures on curving branch

Vultures stay close to the feeding grounds of the Jatayu Vulture Restaurant, Nepal. Photo by Alisha Vasudev ©

 

For close to twenty years, I’ve covered the catastrophic decline, and tentative recovery, of South Asia’s vultures. In my book A River Runs Again, I took a deep dive into the situation in India. Last year, I went to Nepal to cover a new chapter in the story, as the country’s captive-breeding program came to a close, and the last birds were released back into the wild. The story was published today at The New Yorker. Here’s a bit:

We were in a microcosm of abundance in a landscape of loss: most of the nine vulture species found in South Asia were there in front of us. We watched white-rumped vultures, whose neck ruffles look like seventeenth-century formal wear, and Himalayan griffons, which are larger and paler. We also saw an immense cinereous vulture; a red-headed vulture with fuschia wattles; and a small Egyptian vulture. Nepali pointed out a slender-billed vulture. According to the I.U.C.N. Red List of Threatened Species, there are less than one thousand mature individuals left in the world.

One bird tugged at the cow’s head, which was now detached. The vultures were so gross that they were gorgeous. It’s easy to shun vultures as dirty and disgusting, or as harbingers of death, but they are more like undertakers, performing an essential job and receiving little thanks for their work. As obligate scavengers, vultures survive almost exclusively on what is already dead.

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baby sea turtle release!

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two baby sea turtles on the sand

by Meera Subramanian

S. AND I SIT ON A LOG on a San Pancho beach of western Mexico’s Nayarit coast, watching. Soon, we’ve been told, there will be a release of sea turtles, but we don’t know quite where, so we observe the movement of humans on the beach—couples in beach chairs; groups of young, tattooed surfers smoking cigarettes and weed; a woman reading a book. An older man races by in a dune buggy with a woman beside him, and then returns a moment later without her, rousing a trio of short-legged mutts to chase after him, barking and chomping at the tires. Where he has left the woman, a coalescing is under way, and we move toward it.

There we find Odette Brunel, a Mexican ecologist with long brown hair and reading glasses looped around her neck, holding a tan plastic bin. A hundred tiny turtles writhe within. They’re only a few inches long, dark flippers and dark shells barely containing an eager energy. Nearby, an eleven-year-old named Ananda holds another bin with more. A growing crowd crane their necks to look in. Children gather. Parents gather. Cell phone cameras, including mine, are at the ready.

Odette goes hoarse explaining anything she can to anyone who will listen, in English and Spanish. Her soft voice stretches over the sound of island music blaring from a nearby hotel that reaches its square body onto the sand of the beach.

“We call this tortuga golfina. It’s the smallest of the sea turtles that come here.”

…

Read the rest of the story, published in Orion, about witnessing the dangerous, crucial volunteer work of protecting and releasing baby olive ridley sea turtles in Mexico, here. 

And here’s a rough-cut video I made of the evening:

India’s Quest to Build the World’s Largest Solar Farms

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endless expanse of photovoltaic panels reaching to horizon

by Meera Subramanian

“Electrify everything” is a mantra of the global transition away from fossil fuels. But what does this look like, as the entire planet attempts to transition to a clean energy system? I went to the world’s third largest solar park to find out, and the story is just out in The New Yorker  as part of their special climate issue on #bottlenecks.

Pavagada Ultra Mega Solar Park covers thirteen thousand acres, or about twenty square miles—only slightly smaller than the area of Manhattan. And the way that the public-private partnership secured all that land was through a leasing model that’s being replicated elsewhere. Is it working? I met with peanut farmers and security guards, school teachers and solar farm officials, Dalit women who’ve lost access to the lands they once worked on, now covered with solar.

Teenager standing by her family's small shop.

by Meera Subramanian

Man leads his bullock cart laden with hay along road with large power pylons and solar beside it.

by Meera Subramanian

The massive project was up and running in under four years, but now—four years since then—village roads and schools and other promised development projects are still limping along.

Village man with turban walks on road that is being built, a frontloader with gravel and a cow in the background

by Meera Subramanian

And yet, as I stood in a substation, I marveled at how clean this energy is. Is it possible to make these massive installations work for the locals who find them on their homegounds?

Engineer in Pavagada Solar Park substation, sitting by his computer adorned with a flower.

by Meera Subramanian

Thanks to the incredible editor at the New Yorker Daniel A. Gross, and the photographer @SupranavDash, whose photographs are featured in the piece. Huge appreciation to journalist Elizabeth Mani in Bengaluru for her translation and reporting assistance.

#India #solar #renewable #energy #climatechange #climatecrisis #climateemergency #renewableenergy #globalwarming #solarpanels #green #nature #solarpower #environment #cleanenergy  #climate #solarenergy#greenenergy #sustainability #design #earth #sun #environmentaljustice #justtransition #livelihood

Read the story here.

Solastalgia: An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World

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Cover of Solastalgia with a feather floating in a grey sky.34 writers. One planet in flux. How are we processing the changes underfoot and overhead? Join me and other educators, journalists, poets, and scientists as we try to put words to the experience of what Australian philosopher Glenn Albrecht coined “solastalgia”… “the homesickness we feel while still at home.” Edited by Paul Bogard, author of The End of Night and many other books.

Perfectly fitting to release it today. A valentine for the planet. <3

Find your copy today. 

 

 

apologia

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Mourning Dove by Meera Subramanian

In homage to Barry Lopez and Amanda Stronza. And the flying creatures.

The familiar thud on the kitchen glass, but louder, heavier. When I look up, I still see small gray feathers suspended in the air. The stickers that help birds see the glass we like to look through, which I found through the American Bird Conservatory, have helped. The thuds have diminished this season, even as we’re in the thick of migration. I suspect that one of the raptors I’m so enamored of was in pursuit of this dove, frantic, flying fast, until the air became glass and she was downed. Other strikes this year were just stuns. Five minutes later, and the feathers lifted the life back into the sky, airborne again. Not this time.

In the summer of 2021, I had great plans to attend the The Art of Mending show at the Brick House Museum in Kennebunk, Maine. Covid thwarted the plans again and again. I watched the video of exhibition, glad for it, at least. The show was curated by Scott and Nancy Nash of the Illustration Institute / @illustration_institute. They’re friends. (Scott designed the gorgeous logo of RESP for us.) They’re the kind of friends you see once or twice a year and hours pass in an instant, so enlivened and wide-ranging is the conversation. They told us about the show when it was still in the planning stages. In these times when it can feel like too much is broken or breaking, they sought out those who were focused on repair.

woodcut of hands holding a dead bird

From Apologia by Barry Lopez, with woodcuts by Robin Eschner

One of the people they found was Dr. Amanda Stronza / @amandastronza, an anthropologist, conservationist and photographer in Austin, Texas whom they’d come across on Instagram when she started honoring the dead animals she discovered in her meanderings. She created memorials with the flowers, cones, seeds, leaves and whatever natural bits she found around the lifeless body. I took it today as inspiration. It seemed the right thing to do, when I lifted the dove from below the window and carried her to the edge of the yard.

Amanda, in turn, was inspired by Barry Lopez, who wrote about his tendency to stop when he sees roadkill and remove the body. “I carry each one away from the tarmac into a cover of grass or brush out of decency,” he writes in his short book Apologia. “Who are these animals, their lights gone out? What journeys have fallen apart here?”

A journey fell apart here today. More than one. It’s likely there’s a mate nearby, a mourning dove in mourning, their broods fledged but their bond still strong. The hawks won’t come back for their quarry, but perhaps she’ll be sustenance for someone else, a scavenger furry or six-legged, the cycle continuing.

 

person place thing

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Randy Cohen likes to learn about people slant. Instead of asking them about what they do, etc., etc., he asks them about a person, a place, and a thing that are meaningful to them. It was a pleasure to talk with him about girls in India, maps of Texas, and falcons over Cape Cod. Person Place Thing from Northeast Public Radio’s WAMC was produced with Orion magazine. Have a listen here.

Beyond the Promise of Plastic

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What is the role of storytelling in altering the future of plastics? How might storying plastics differently help shift culture? Or invite change? Or directly address plastic pollution, drawing down the volume of short-term use plastics and the host of support chemistries that make them possible?

This event emerged from a series of four pieces on plastics that Orion published over 2020-2021. You can watch the webinar here, hosted by Beyond Plastics’ Judith Enck, but I encourage you to read all of the pieces in the series, too. Dr. Rebecca Altman, who is a sociologist working on a book about the socio-environmental legacy of plastics, served as the guest editor and it was a beautiful collaborative process to work with her and Orion editor Sumanth Prabhaker.

Rebecca’s piece, “Upriver,” reveals her journey of generations, of thinking you’re moving away from something when you’re really diving right into it. Because you can’t not. Because it’s everywhere. Orion, which is a gorgeous magazine that you really should subscribe to so you can enjoy the sumptuous art and layout as well as the words, features Ansel Adams photography you’ve never seen before with her piece.

“Hand in Glove” by David Ferrier, author of Footprints: In Search of Future Fossils, was written early in the pandemic and considers all those plastic gloves…and the last hand he held before lockdown, his grandmother’s.

Plastics geographer Dr. Max Liboiron‘s considers their role as a researcher in Newfoundland in the piece “Plastics in the Gut.” When does scientific standardization turn into a form of colonialism and how can researchers learn to think with locals as they gather information? Their book, Pollution is Colonialism, explores this more deeply.

And my piece was “The Nature of Plastics,” in which I explored the ecological, biological and geological impact of this material that is so new, and so transformative, and so ubiquitous that it is altering every facet of life on earth.

The Nature of Plastics

If you’re not already familiar with the organization Beyond Plastics, I encourage you to visit their website, sign up for their email list, or follow them on social media at Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.