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On America: Writing & Reading the Environment

November 4, 2020 By meerasub Leave a Comment

From our home places, we convene. It is tonic. To get a chance to explore storytelling with these talented writers, all approaching their craft from different angles, was such a pleasure. Here’s the full post about the October 1 event, with an expansive suggested reading list. We were: a panel of writers, journalists, and climate change activists considering the formal, structural elements environmental writers can bring to storytelling, how to handle or tell stories that support political stances, and examine the stories out there that can foster a better understanding of our environmental crisis. But it was so much more. Exploring systems of reciprocity, how far writing can reach (will there ever be another Silent Spring?) and, and, and….

Have a look. And then pick up Kerri Arsenault’s rooted true tale Mill Town. And Bathsheba Demuth’s exquisite Floating Coast. Travel the world through John’s latest Freeman’s: Love. Seek out the deeply thought-through essays on climate and the hard questions they force upon us by Emily Raboteau and Meehan Crist.

Thanks to our hosts: Center for Fiction in collaboration with Orion Magazine and the National Book Critics Circle as part of the Brooklyn Book Festival’s Bookends series.

Filed Under: climate change, events Tagged With: Brooklyn Book Festival, Center for Fiction, climate change, journalism, National Book Critics Circle, Orion, readings, writing tips

Art and Urgency: Journalism in the Post-Truth Era

October 29, 2020 By meerasub Leave a Comment

<<SCROLL DOWN TO WATCH A REPLAY>>
It was such a pleasure talking about writing with this incredible group of people. Jeff has long served as a mentor to me, since I studied under him at NYU, and Paul is one of the best editors I know. Getting a chance to step inside Alex and Alexis’s minds to see how they think about their incredible stories was equally inspiring. Have a listen with the link below…
~Meera
MacDowell Journalism Panel Examines the Fragility of Facts and Urgency of Art in a Post-Truth Era. Virginia Quarterly Review Editor Paul Reyes will moderate a discussion with prominent journalists Alex Marzano-Lesnevich, Meera Subramanian, Alexis Okeowo, and Jeff Sharlet.A virtual panel discussion among five award-winning journalists titled “Art and Urgency: Journalism in the Post-Truth Era” took place here on October 26, 2020 at 7 p.m. It examined the importance of solid news reporting and why making art is more important today than ever. The discussion, led by Virginia Quarterly Review Editor and MacDowell board member Paul Reyes, looked into the fragile position of news media at a time when a growing portion of the populace gets its news from suspect sources.“In a media landscape where facts are pliable, where the news has become a hall of mirrors,” said Reyes, “it’s important to appreciate how literary and narrative journalism—which are at the heart of what MacDowell supports—are able to cut through the noise in order to carve out the truth, offering a visceral clarity to the reading public.”Reyes was joined by The Fact of a Body author Alex Marzano-Lesnevich; journalist Meera Subramanian, whose book A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis from the Barren Cliffs of Rajasthan to the Farmlands of Karnataka, was a finalist for the Orion Book Award; PEN Open Book Award-winner and writer for The New Yorker and The New York Times Magazine Alexis Okeowo; and bestseller and Virginia Quarterly Review Editor at Large Jeff Sharlet whose latest book This Brilliant Darkness: A Book of Strangers, is a deep, genre-bending immersion into the lives of everyday citizens.

This was an evening of incisive conversation with MacDowell Fellows who work in investigative and long-form narrative journalism. In this era of the 30-second soundbite and relative truth, in-depth reporting and groundbreaking nonfiction writing are more important than ever.

MacDowell has been supporting journalists for decades, and believes a new model of assistance is needed for journalists who dedicate their lives to telling complex stories that have the power to change our lives and make our society better. The Art of Journalism Initiative at MacDowell is one way we support groundbreaking voices in non-fiction—like those of James Baldwin, Shane Bauer, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Frances FitzGerald, Sheri Fink, William Finnegan, Adrian Nicole Leblanc, and others.

With The Art of Journalism initiative, we are investing $2 million in Fellowships for journalists and long-form non-fiction authors, as well as providing journalism project grants, while helping to link a new network of publishers, non-profit newsrooms, and other key players in the journalism community to MacDowell’s artist community. Get the scoop here .

Watch the video here: Art & Urgency Video

Filed Under: events, InsideClimate News, journalism, readings, video Tagged With: craft, journalism, MacDowell, memoir, truth, VQR

United in Change

December 16, 2019 By meerasub Leave a Comment

Photo by Meera Subramanian

As a reader I find there are stories that just stick with me; I can’t shake them. But as a journalist, I experience this a thousand-fold. What appears in print can feel like a haiku, with too many interviews and notebook jottings ending up on the cutting room floor. The histories of place I unearthed through research. The letters to the editor in the thin pages of the local newspaper. The anecdotes shared by those who didn’t make it into the piece. The deep story revealed behind and between their words, too big for the bounds of the word-count. 

As I finished up each of the nine pieces that were part of the series Finding Middle Ground series for InsideClimate News that I worked on for most of 2017-18, about perceptions of climate change in conservative parts of the country, I would find filaments linking them with each other that I didn’t have room to explore. I’d get tangled in threads leading to stories I’d reported in other parts of the world, a lament I heard from a peach farmer in Georgia echoing what a rice farmer had said in India. There were strands of sinew between what I learned in the field and what I knew from my own personal life, a peripatetic journey that’s granted me multiple vantage points, making me feel at home both nowhere and everywhere at once. 

Last year I became a contributing editor of Orion magazine, a publication I’ve read for many years, enjoying the lush richness of its pages, the images and poems and book reviews and NO ADS. (Yes, this is a nonprofit endeavor, and, yes, you can support it by subscribing.)  With this piece for Orion, I finally had a chance to reach up for some of those disparate threads that have been floating around in my head since I finished the ICN series and try to weave them into something that made sense. Or, at least, began to make sense. Still, it feels like a haiku. Still, there is so much unsaid at the edges. Because the story of climate change at this moment in time is immense, and shifting. We’re all living this in real-time, the scientists and storytellers and skeptics all. Much of what I found over 18 months of reporting is deeply troubling, the changes underway stirring so much into uncertainty, but I also hold onto the possibility of the disruption as a great opportunity. No rain without thunder and lightning, Frederick Douglass reminded us. And the storm of climate change is here, now. Anything could happen. 

The piece begins…

For the past couple of years, I traveled across my country, falling in love with strangers. I sought them out—farmers, ranchers, fly fishermen, evangelicals— and stepped into their lives, uninvited but nearly always, inexplicably, welcome. I sought some kind of connection, asking them questions few seemed to be asking them, about their lives and what they care about and what they believe in. Who they vote for and why. What they remember from before and what they expect in the future, which to their collective grief are often different things.

Read the rest here.

Filed Under: agriculture, cattle, climate change, drought, InsideClimate News, journalism, North Dakota, photography, travels Tagged With: climate change, conservation, grief, InsideClimate News, journalism, loss, Nature, Orion, photography, politics, pollution environment

In Texas, Wind Power is Job Security

December 26, 2017 By meerasub Leave a Comment

Kaitlin Sullivan, wind energy student at TSTC, peeks in from the top of a 300′ wind turbine in Texas. Photo by Meera Subramanian

 

Here’s the latest in Finding Middle Ground series, from Sweetwater, Texas:

All along the straight-shot roads of Nolan County in West Texas, wind turbines soar over endless acres of farms, the landscape either heavy with cotton ready to harvest or flushed green with the start of winter wheat. The turbines rise from expanses of ranches, where black Angus beef cattle gaze placidly at the horizon. Here and there are abandoned farmhouses dating to the 1880s, when this land was first settled and water windmills were first erected. Occasionally a few pump jacks bob their metallic heads, vestiges of a once-booming oil industry still satiating an endless thirst.

Every industry creates an ecosystem around it. If the wind turbines that sprouted in West Texas were huge steel trees, spinning sleek carbon-fiber blades 100 feet in length, then the wind farms—including Roscoe Wind Project and Horse Hollow Wind Energy Center, some of the largest in the world—were their forest. Spread out across the expansive vista, invisible air currents feed the structures, their imperceptible roots extending out to the community that contains them.

Read the rest at InsideClimate News here. 

 

 

 

Filed Under: journalism Tagged With: climate change, energy, InsideClimate News, jobs, journalism, oil & gas, renewable energy, Sweetwater, Texas, Texas State Technical College, USA, wind energy

On ‘Writing the Book You Can’t Not Write’

September 21, 2017 By meerasub Leave a Comment

Between the Lines: Subramanian on ‘Writing the Book You Can’t Not Write’

For the latest installment of SEJournal’s author Q & A, “Between the Lines,” Meera Subramanian talks to book editor Tom Henry about the research and writing process behind her debut, “A River Runs Again: India’s Natural World in Crisis,” a 2016 Orion Book Award finalist that travels from the barren cliffs of Rajasthan to the farmlands of Karnataka.

SEJournal: What inspired you to write “A River Runs Again?”

Meera Subramanian: I have visited India all my life to see my father’s family and couldn’t help but observe how things were done there compared to my home in the United States. I’d be older with each trip, viewing with a new perspective, but India was changing, too, and when the country opened up its economy in the 1990s, that change ramped up to a frantic pace.

But who was getting left behind as the IT boom swept South Asia? Where was this country that is now poised to become the most populous nation on Earth heading in terms of development? What were they doing right and what were they doing wrong in a place where a growing population was colliding with limited natural resources, where everyone wants to satisfy their basic needs — and then some?

But this wasn’t just describing India; it was the state of the entire world. I decided to start with India, a place I could view with the fresh eyes of an outsider but also with a touch of insider knowledge.

Read the entire interview here.

Filed Under: journalism Tagged With: Elemental India, Fulbright, india, journalism, Knight Science Journalism, peregrine falcon, Society of Environmental Journalists

southern hospitality

April 27, 2017 By meerasub Leave a Comment

After a year of growing boycotts, North Carolina reversed part of its Public Facilities Privacy & Security Act, better known as HB 2 or simply the Bathroom Bill, in March 2017. I was there immediately after that decision and took to the streets of North Carolina to see what people were thinking about who gets to use what bathrooms in the state. Here’s what I found:

Southern Hospitality from Meera Subramanian on Vimeo.

Filed Under: video Tagged With: Bathroom Bill, boycott, HB2, journalism, North Carolina, transgender, video

sitting down with Noam Chomsky

November 23, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

Twice a week, someone spectacular walks through the door of the Knight Science Journalism office door. As part of the fellowship, we have these seminars twice a week, and Director Deborah Blum has set up a stellar lineup of scientists, authors, journalists, and scholars to come speak with us about their work. It is, as they say, an honor and a privilege.

Renowned linguist and philosopher Noam Chomsky was scheduled to come earlier in the semester and then had to cancel due to a cold. Perhaps it was a blessing. The rescheduled day was November 17th, the week following the election that would upset American politics and set the stage for Donald Trump to be our next president.

We had new questions for our visitor. The fellows pooled our inquiries, and with Lauren Whaley and Iván Carillo overseeing audio-video, I sat down in a chair opposite Professor Chomsky to ask him at least a few of our collective questions.

Learn more and watch the three-minute highlights video or the full 20-minute interview here at Undark.

Filed Under: journalism, Knight Science Journalism, News Tagged With: Cambridge, climate change, election, journalism, Knight Science Journalism, Noam Chomsky, politics, Trump

Knight Science Journalism fellowship

May 5, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

istockdome_small1

I still can’t quite believe that, come August, I’ll be joining an incredible cohort of journalists for the Knight Science Journalism fellowship at MIT.

Here’s the official announcement, which begins…

The Knight Science Journalism Program at MIT, the premier global fellowship program for journalists covering science, technology, health and the environment, is proud to announce that ten journalists, representing five countries, have been selected to join the program’s 34th class of fellows.

Proud that of the ten journalists, three of us are from the Society of Environmental Journalists, including Robert McClure of Investigate West and Rosalia Omungo of the Kenya Broadcasting Corporation in Nairobi. Mark Wolverton and I mucked about in a salt marsh last summer when we did the MBL Logan Science Journalism program out of Woods Hole, MA. I plan on [Read more…]

Filed Under: journalism Tagged With: awards, Cambridge, journalism, Knight Science Journalism, Society of Environmental Journalists

Will Modi Colonize his Country or Enact EcoSwaraj?

March 20, 2016 By meerasub Leave a Comment

NEW DELHI/INDIA, 16NOV08 -Narendra Modi, Chief Minister of Gujarat, India, speaks during the welcome lunch at the World Economic Forum's India Economic Summit 2008 in New Delhi, 16-18 November 2008. Copyright World Economic Forum (www.weforum.org)/Photo by Norbert Schiller

Photo by Norbert Schiller via Wikimedia Commons

I am a half-daughter of India. I have watched the South Asian nation develop since I first visited Madras as a young girl, my Indian father bringing his fair-skinned American wife and my brother and me from America on multiple trips to visit dozens of relatives along the shores of the Bay of Bengal.

In the forty years since that first visit, the country has undergone a whole-scale transformation. Never have there been so many humans with so much elemental need for healthy food, clean water, and dependable energy systems. How will India bring these basics to her citizenry?

In recent years, I have visited as an environmental journalist and Fulbright scholar to seek out the answer to this question, investigating the state of India’s natural world and exploring how the elements – earth, water, fire, air and ether – are faring. I found a subcontinent in crisis, but I also found individuals and organisations reinventing their landscapes and lives.

Whether they will receive support from the government remains to be seen.

Read the rest at TheDailyO.

Filed Under: A River Runs Again, elemental india, journalism Tagged With: A River Runs Again, Elemental India, india, journalism, opinion

matt power: in memoriam

March 10, 2016 By meerasub

Photo I took of Matt Power as we roamed through NYC in the blizzard of February 2006

 

I wrote this almost two years ago, and read it at Matt’s Vermont memorial. I think I’m ready to post it.

“Did you water the plants?”

The g-chats would come from Asia, South America, Africa. I would sigh and smile and type back in that too abrupt chat shorthand. “Yup” and then we’d bounce to some other topic, often dirt-or-word related. Matt Power could be both singularly obsessed and as scattered as the visas in his passport. Did he know that I cared as much about the plants’ survival – the striated leaves of the spider plant in the bay window of the parlor and the abundance of the vegetable-berry-herb-opium poppy garden of the summer – as he did? If I wasn’t on my own travels, I was babying the babies too, giving them water as they soaked up the south sun, all of us awaiting his next return to Hawthorne Street. I lived there with Matt and Jess for five years, from the first day when we sat on the bare floor in the bare limestone (“It’s not a brownstone,” Matt would correct.) eating takeout, as a cast of characters came and went, until I left too. Did he know I loved the plants? Did he know, we all asked last week, when news of his death in Uganda arrived, how much we loved him?

We often step into each other’s lives in quiet, non-monumental ways. [Read more…]

Filed Under: News Tagged With: Brooklyn, journalism, Matthew Power, New York City

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