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• latest pieces and unpublished oldies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

 

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:

• Two-Step Devil by Jamie Quatro, (I have the good fortune of teaching with Jamie at Sewanee School of Letters each summer, which is when she placed an advance copy in my hands). The New York Times called it “theologically avant-garde and emotionally supple.” I couldn’t agree more. The story of the outsider artist and the girl he’s trying to save was multi-layered story of good and evil and intentions and escape. A page-turner.
• Orbital by Samantha Harvey transformed my world when I read it in the Appalachian woods this summer in Tennessee, now seeing my surroundings from the elevated vantage of the few who look down on us from the International Space Station. Samantha zoomed in to Jamie Quatro’s fiction class, which I sat in on, and she is a delightful, delighted human. Orbital is now shortlisted for the Booker Prize. Also, read this wonderful review by James Wood in The New Yorker and just get lost in the videos…
• The Serviceberrry by Robin Wall Kimmerer. I’ve got a review coming up in Scientific American. More soon!
• Reboot by Justin Taylor. Justin is the director of the Sewanee School of Letters and a voracious collector of ideas gleaned from music and gaming and esoteric religions and more. It all comes together in this romp of a novel. You can find him here on Substack.
• Love is a Burning Thing by Nina St. Pierre is a brilliant first book by Nina, who I cam to know when we selected her as one of our Religion & Environment Story Project fellows. She is a captivating person, and this book shows how being the daughter of a loving but struggling and seeking mother—and the survival Nina had to find for herself—helped make her who she is.
• Prophet by Helen Macdonald and Sin Blaché. I toppled for Helen Macdonald’s writing with H is for Hawk. This is completely different and completely wonderful. A queer sci-fi novel about using nostalgia as a method of war. I couldn’t put it down.

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!