A Note from Samaa Abdurraqib
At the time of this conversation, the Northeastern spring had been slowly emerging for the past three weeks or so. And, as someone who starts dreaming of springtime once the red-winged blackbirds come back in late February, I had been fully immersing myself in the excitement of bird migration and colorful new growth for days on end. The natural world is regularly in my mind and in my writing, particularly now when many of us are noticing big and small shifts around us.
When I sat down with these three writers—Jeff VanderMeer, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Amy Leach—I was curious to know more about how nature inspired them and found its way into their work. Our conversation was an absolute delight! We seemed to take up Amy Leach’s notion of being “under the influence of nature” as we allowed our conversation to naturally meander and amble. In the process of talking about the ways these writers engaged with the outdoors, we (of course) addressed mammals, insects, and plants, but also concepts like wonder, close observation, and connection. Nature is vast; nature is abundant. And writing about the outdoors reflects that vastness and abundance.
The following transcript of our conversation has been edited slightly for length and flow.
Samaa Abdurraqib
It’s such a wonderful time to have this conversation. It’s spring here in Maine. Finally. It all feels a little late—things are not flowering as they should. But I was out really, really early this morning so I could check out the warbler migration. These two weeks are the hot and heavy weeks up here, and so, I’m just feeling effervescent and really excited to have this conversation.
I know that we’ll kind of meander, but let’s just start by sharing names and where you are, and maybe what’s happening around you right now. Aimee, do you want to start?
Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Great. Sure, and even though I know the work of both Amy and Jeff, this is the first time seeing them in, I guess, 2-D. So I’m very excited. I am in Connecticut, but my hometown is Oxford, Mississippi, and right now what’s going on? It’s in the sixties here in Connecticut, but I left about eighty-five degrees back home. We’re in summer, basically, already in Mississippi.
And what’s going on? We’re in a different part of the migration, Samaa. Like right now it’s hummingbirds. They are . . . going wild. And one little fun fact about Oxford, Mississippi, which is northern Mississippi, is that’s one of the big stops for hummingbirds. We have an annual hummingbird festival. It’s one of the big refueling points of going back to Mexico and Central America, and then coming back into the eastern seaboard. So we are having a frenzy of refueling birds. And they’ll stay around! Some of them will stay around in the summer, the rest go all the way up to New York, and possibly Maine? I don’t know. I know at least New York. So that’s going on right now.
And right now in the garden is all green tomatoes, so I’m very excited. And we just wrapped the semester, so I’m on my last leg of a three-week tour.
And Saturday after I see you in person, Samaa, at the Camden Festival of Poetry, I am done for the summer. I do my garden hibernation for the summer.
Abdurraqib
Oh, that sounds wonderful. Garden hibernation. Thank you, Aimee. And I guess I’ll have to say Aimee N. and Amy L. I didn’t even think about that until just now. Amy L., you want to just say a little bit about where you are and what’s going on around you?
Amy Leach
Thank you. I’m delighted to be part of this conversation. Okay, I’m Zooming from Bozeman, Montana. We have lived here for fourteen years. We moved here from Chicago. And for fourteen years, every season continues to be more beautiful than the last.
What’s happening around here? Well, after an April of, like, blizzards every Thursday, May is bringing summertime. The little green aspen leaves that you might be able to see behind me are uncrumpling themselves and the red-winged blackbirds are back, and the sandhill cranes are singing their prehistorically creaky songs.
I took the dogs up a trail whose spurious name . . . well, I won’t say a spurious name, its true name is Wildflower Lane, because the wildflowers are rioting! The dogs and I saw larkspur and phlox and prairie smoke. And if you count the leafy versions of the plants, we saw lupines, and wild irises and roses. I also saw some old friends who I know only by their faces, not their names. Old Flower Friends, yes.
Nezhukumatathil
I love it.
Abdurraqib
Oh, that sounds gorgeous. That sounds really gorgeous. It makes me hopeful about what’s yet to come here in Maine. Jeff, how about you? Where are you? And what’s going on where you are?
Jeff VanderMeer
I am in Portland, Oregon. And that’s after having been in Florida for a long time, and I’m kind of adjusting to—learning a little bit more about—the seasons here and the flux and flow of wildlife and migrating birds. I’m kind of happy in my ignorance for now.
There was something about hiking in Florida towards the end where it was too much of an inundation of information, like, I was happy to know so much about the native plants and everything, but every hike was just . . . a lot, you know? And so here, I’m back to knowing the mammals, some of the birds, but not all of them. Almost none of the plants. And it’s somehow very liberating to be in that space right now, and not have to focus . . . or not have everything in focus, so to speak.
Portland’s also a little different with regard to urban wildlife from where I was. There’s a clear demarcation, I think, between urban wildlife and Mount Hood and the other places that are outside of here.
But there’s also this influx, so the neighbors right now are dealing with—in a very sweet, gentle way—a pair of mallard ducks has decided to live in their very small grassy backyard, and they’re looking up, you know, what their obligations are, what they should and shouldn’t do. And, I think, also hoping that the mallards won’t nest in their backyard, because then they have to do something about how to get the ducklings to water.
But the good and kind of sweet thing is the general feeling towards wildlife here seems very, very gentle and very . . . forgiving and kind, which, to be absolutely honest, was not my experience in Florida sometimes.
Abdurraqib
Really?
VanderMeer
And I feel I’m also being a little bit . . . hypnotized. There’s a gigantic crow that comes to my bedroom window every morning at dawn, where I have the shades drawn, and just crows very loudly.
Leach
Wow.
VanderMeer
And then goes to the railing on the back porch. And yesterday, I found myself getting up at 5:30 because of this, and putting some peanuts out for the crow.
Nezhukumatathil
Oh my goodness.
VanderMeer
Which is not my usual MO, you know, I don’t feed wildlife, but somehow this crow has now trained me, or at least for one day, thus far. So I’m contemplating what that means.
I’m also taking a lot of long urban hikes, because there’s a lot of green space here, and taking a lot of hikes up in the mountains and just kind of learning this place.
Abdurraqib
Wow. Wow. Um . . . yes!
Nezhukumatathil
I’m so jealous, Jeff, because you might soon, of course, be getting gifts from the crows to say thank you. And that’s just the most magical. It has not happened [to me] yet, even though I try feeding them. That’s like hashtag goals to get a little shiny thing from a crow.
Abdurraqib
It is a lovely thing. And I imagine you just have to wait for the crow to tell you what it’s training you to do.
VanderMeer
Yeah, I feel like the crow’s smarter than me.
Abdurraqib
I guess you’re in like . . . phase one of the training. Well, it’s really wonderful to hear what’s happening where you all are. Again, it is so good to be here with you all. This Big Conversation is about writing the outdoors, and I wanted to start by just getting into what that means, because there are so many ways one can engage with the outdoors, and “the outdoors” can have so many different connotations and meanings. I wanted to start by interrogating the phrase “writing the outdoors.” What does that mean to you? Amy L., do you want to start?
“I consider myself writing under the influence of the outdoors, whether I’m writing about the outdoors or not.”
Leach
Sure. I guess it kind of depends on the little words inserted between “writing” and “outdoors.” Like, are you writing about the outdoors? I consider myself writing under the influence of the outdoors, whether I’m writing about the outdoors or not. I aspire to write under the influence of trees and mountains and bears and elk and mist and crows and mallards. Because I think it makes my writing weirder. And stranger, and . . . larger.
I’ve been reading the writings of people not typically thought of as nature writers. I’ve been reading the letters of Vincent van Gogh and the autobiography of W. C. Handy, who’s the father of the blues, and both of them said kind of the same thing: that their main teacher in their art was nature. Van Gogh said that nature had told him something, and he tried to take notes from Professor Potato and Professor Star, and even though his notes were indecipherable, or maybe because they were indecipherable, nature had taught him a language that was not tame or conventional, or studied or mannered. W. C. Handy, the father of the blues, grew up in a really strictly religious home, and musical instruments were not allowed in the house. So what he did was go outside! And he said that the whippoorwills and the owls taught him the blues. These two artists are kind of my models for what I think of as writing the outdoors.
I guess one more thing: I like the idea of taking my structure not from books, not from guidebooks, not from anything remotely academic, but from trees and rivers and greenbriers. So an essay can meander like a river. Or it can grow in lots of different directions at one time, like a tree, or it can just be wildly overgrown with thorny briars, like greenbriers. In my last book, I think pickles tied it all together. Flamingos are tying it all together in the book that I’m writing now. Because I grew up in Texas, and the greenbriers would just kind of overgrow all the trees, and that’s what kind of happens when I write—some little weedy vines start taking over, and I just . . . I have to let it take over.
Abdurraqib
You’ve given us such a visual of your writing, and I love it—this idea that you take your structure from nature.
Aimee N., how about you?
Nezhukumatathil
Oh, I love that answer, Amy. It’s so delightful to hear your interpretation of that. And I did not know that about Vincent van Gogh, in particular. What I would say to that, too, is I just feel like Mother Nature is the greatest poet ever, and I’m just taking notes. She gives me vocabulary; she gives me music and rhythm and patience and tension. I mean, all the makings of the best writing is kind of right there in nature. That’s why I have no tolerance for when people say they’re stuck on writing. For me, it’s like, is there enough time to write about all the things I want to write about? And very often, it happens to be about something in the outdoors, you know? Just the vocabulary of flowers is a whole other language, and it’s one that is a special place for me. The language of stars, the language of rocks, cacti, plants, flowers in particular.
My parents—and I don’t want to assume if you guys know this—but my mom is Filipino, and my dad is from the southern tip of India. And their first date was an Elvis Presley concert in Chicago. [laughs] We moved around a lot, but every place where we lived, they made it a point . . . I’m so moved by these two immigrants who made it a point to know the native plants and birds. And my dad taught me how to read the stars, no matter if I was in the suburbs of Phoenix or in rural Kansas. That was just the best stepping stones for becoming a writer. I mean, they gave me the vocabulary of the outdoors, or they encouraged me to have the vocabulary for the outdoors at such a young age. And I find that especially moving because this country wasn’t always habitable to them, but they always tried to show me how beautiful this country is, and how beautiful the inhabitants of this country are.
My parents are getting older, so maybe that’s why it’s on my mind heavily now more than ever, but I can’t look at the outdoors without giving kudos and thanks to my two immigrant parents who gave me that. I think they’re very unusual in that, because most of my mom’s doctor pals, or my dad’s doctor pals, they were like in the books, you know—work, work, work. Like, eighty-hour weeks, that kind of thing. I don’t know how my parents did it, but my dad always made sure we were out looking at the stars, going on hikes. My mom would drag me along to a nursery, even if I didn’t want to go. And not too many Asian Americans were doing that in the seventies and eighties. We were always the only ones on the trails. I grew up in Phoenix, and I can’t remember seeing other Asians at the Grand Canyon, or on trails just outside of Phoenix. We definitely got looked at strangely, you know? And I overheard people making fun of my dad’s beautiful accent. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it then, but that was a place where I both saw my parents so happy and also a little nervous. Like: Who’s gonna make fun of me in front of my kids, or who’s gonna question why we’re there, or anything like that. And again, I didn’t have the vocabulary for it. Looking back now, I realize it was kind of marvelous that they did that for me and my younger sister.
Abdurraqib
Yeah, Aimee, that really resonates. Being here in in Maine and being a person who loves the outdoors. It’s shifted a lot now, but I’m still often the only person of color in the spaces where I’m walking, learning, and experiencing the outdoors. What a gift that your parents gave you.
Jeff, what about you?
VanderMeer
Yeah, a lot of different answers suggest themselves, and it’s oddly, in a way, tied to how I write my novels, which is to say I tend to write part of it, try to get the tone and the style correct, and then I ask myself what the novel in question needs in terms of process—outline, no outline, improv, so to speak. I try to let the novel tell me what I need to do for it. I try not to have a set process. And the same thing with spaces, I guess. When I’m kind of daydreaming about writing and using that space to kind of spur my imagination. I’m trying to figure out what is it this space is offering?
Too many times on trails, I’ll see what I would call people who are too specialists. I’m not criticizing. It’s just, if you’re there and it’s the insects, just to give a very prosaic example, and there are no birds, focus on the insects, you know? And depending on the season, there may be something there that isn’t your usual interest that’s really fascinating. I try to be good about listening to the landscape, and also the scale of things. My dad studied pheromones of insects, and my mom was basically a nature landscape painter. Those are vastly different types of concentration, right? So I try not to get too fixated on any one thing.
That said, there are very big differences in landscape between Oregon and Florida that have been kind of interesting to me. Because it seems to me that the geography and the geology of Oregon means that what I find awe-inspiring about it often exists in the landscape. In Florida, it existed in some of the extremely wild wildlife. The massive alligators, you know? In north Florida, you could have one hundred miles of dirt roads, no Wi-Fi, and get completely lost if you didn’t have a physical map, which I think is pretty rare these days. So I’ve been kind of fixated on these adjustments and what I’m learning from them, or trying to learn. For example, I didn’t know I had a situational awareness about alligators until I moved to Oregon. For the first six months here, every log in every lake I saw, out of the corner of my eye, I thought it was an alligator. Once, I saw a light station at the end of a long jetty on the coast of Oregon, and I started clambering over the rocks to get to the light station, because it looked cool, and I happened to text my friend Sarah Swanson, this birder, and told her what I was doing. She’s like, “No, Jeff, the jetty will kill you!” [laughter] I guess all of these people have been injured on this jetty, and in Florida, of course, the jetty’s, like, nothing. It’s not gonna kill you. So there are these adjustments that are testing my assumptions about places.
Then there’s also the fact that I’ve been fortunate enough to have encounters with wildlife that, themselves, define the moment, or the place, and have told me that I’m not actually the one with any kind of agency. I once encountered a Florida panther on a trail in a very strange time. It was, like, 2:00 in the afternoon. I had already hiked fourteen miles, it was the middle of summer. There was no going back. The panther was literally just standing there. While it walked towards me down the trail, I was wondering whether I was upwind or downwind, not knowing, and not having enough brain cells left to figure that out.
Nezhukumatathil
Oh my gosh.
VanderMeer
And I realized that whatever was gonna happen was gonna happen, and I had no control over it whatsoever.
Nezhukumatathil
Was this in the Everglades?
VanderMeer
No, it was actually in central Florida, but it was decades ago. And for the longest time, I doubted myself. I kept going through all the routine questions. Could it have been a bobcat? No, not the tail. Could it have been this? Could it have been that? It was one of those moments where you just . . . it makes you understand the world in a better, more interesting way, I think. And so you’re not kind of imposed on the landscape. You realize how small a part of it you are.
Abdurraqib
Wow, Jeff, that was something else! I imagine you left your body for a moment and then came back into your body.
VanderMeer
Honestly, I weirdly came to an acceptance of, “Well, if this is the end, this is the end.” I don’t know how that happened exactly. I was fairly chill about it, you know? I don’t know why exactly, maybe because I was exhausted. I guess that’s kind of the same thing you’re talking about, like, being out of your body, but yeah, it was quite an interesting moment, to say the least.
Abdurraqib
I so appreciate all of the ways that all three of you have talked about your experiences in the natural world, both the historical and current, and how they connect to your writing. It makes me wonder, when you take inspiration from nature—which is kind of what all of you are talking about—can you isolate what that is? Is it the curiosity of life history of a species? The specifics? Or is it generalized beauty? Is it . . . everything? Amy L., when you say that you’re taking the structure from nature, could you say a little bit more about that? Because there are many people who find inspiration in the beauty of a specific thing, and there are some people who find inspiration in how different species in natural communities work together. There are some who find inspiration just from observing. I just want to hear more about the specific inspiration that comes into your work.
Leach
This kind of ties into what Jeff was saying about the work needing more improv. I think that’s what I’m always looking for. Jeff, you also said something about the encounter with the panther making you realize you had no control, and I think that’s what I’m always getting at, like, that’s my main greenbrier in life—relinquishing control.
I tried to write this essay one time in a mock voice of some critics who were criticizing the earth for breaking all the rules, all the aesthetic rules. Like, you just can’t predict it! It doesn’t adhere to any kind of aesthetic rules and regulations. In my personal life, though, I’m not always giving up control. But I think aesthetically, that is what I’m always looking for, something that’s bigger than my ideas, bigger than my stereotypes, bigger than my prejudices. I think that’s . . . Oh, something that you said, Aimee, about how there’s not possibly gonna be enough time to write about all that you could write about in nature. It’s just . . . fathomless, bottomless, infinite. And when I first started writing, when I did my MFA in nonfiction, I tried to write about myself, and I found that subject . . . to not be fathomless. I quickly got to the bottom of that one, and quickly swerved into things that I knew nothing about! Like, I had no preconceptions of porcupines, no preconceptions about caterpillars, therefore, they made my mind go kerblooey, and made me think all kinds of new things. So, I think . . . If that makes sense, that’s what I’m always looking for. Lead me to the rock that is higher than I.
Nezhukumatathil
I love that. What did you say, Amy? Make your mind go kerblooey. I want that on a T-shirt. Make your mind go kerblooey. That’s exactly it. When I get an assignment or commissioned a poem, or something like that, I’ll do it if it intrigues me enough, but it’s not my favorite kind of writing. I’m always kind of jealous when someone’s like, “Oh, write about X,” and they get it done. I almost have to write all the way around it before I can ever get to the subject because my mind isn’t kerblooey.
This group asked me to write about everything I’ve learned about motherhood. And I was like, no, that’s the most . . . [laughs] I wouldn’t even want to read that, let alone write it. And there is so much about motherhood in particular that I don’t know, that I am not a master of. I guess maybe that’s the thing. I don’t ever want to be the master or the specialist of anything, you know? I think growing up, there was always this idea that the jack-of-all-trades, master of none was a bad thing, but I kind of don’t want to be a master of anything. And I say this even though I know I teach at an MFA program.
I’m always trying to get my students to . . . I don’t know if “unlearn” is the right term, but . . . not strive for being a master, even though that’s in the degree, you know? Like, I love ornithologists, I love people who study cephalopods, things like that. More power to them! But my mind also goes kerblooey when I feel like a student. I think the minute I stop feeling like a student, just shuffle me aside, take me to Bali or something. I don’t ever want to say, “Now I’m the expert,” or that kind of thing. That just seems so utterly boring to me. I want to always feel like I’m a student learning about the planet.
And I feel like I’m going far away from what you were saying, Samaa, except for the fact that I don’t want mastery—I want to be a student of the outdoors. So I think maybe, Jeff, what you were saying about getting to a new place and then suddenly, instead of freaking out like, “Gosh, I used to know all the plants and animals here,” and I don’t want to put words in your mouth, but I felt similar when I moved to Mississippi from western New York.
You know, the majority of World of Wonders couldn’t have ever been written in my place in western New York. I was dropped into the South for the first time, and even though my parents live in central Florida, I never lived there, and I had preconceived notions of what Mississippi was, and I didn’t realize, like, how everything does grow like kudzu, and it’s just so verdant and green. Bugs and birds, like, just on blast. It’s no coincidence that I was writing sentences instead of poems and short line breaks and things like that. I think my writing expanded when I was suddenly trying to figure out the sounds and the smells and the textures of southern landscapes that I was not aware of, and now the last thing I’ll say about it is I’m now a firefly tour guide for Mississippi State Parks.
Abdurraqib
That’s awesome.
Nezhukumatathil
Not that I’m an expert, but it just gives me an excuse to chat with a bunch of other people who are also wanting to learn more about insects, and that’s my jam. Like, that’s my idea of a good time, you know? And that’s happening in about two weeks here in Mississippi—it’ll be firefly season. That’s just the nerd in me. I am no firefly expert, but I just can’t wait to show these beautiful insects to others.
Leach
What you’re saying about learning and being a student and not being a specialist—like Jeff said too—speaks to me. There’s a line from Wisława Szymborska, in her Nobel lecture, where she says something like, “Whatever inspiration is, it is born from a continuous I don’t know.”
Nezhukumatathil
Oh, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it.
VanderMeer
And I think there’s a sense of play we’re talking about here that you kind of lose when you become too rigidly expert. For me, the thing I am proudest of in the nature space—it’s really silly—is that I started using the word adorbler for warblers, and now it’s in some birding dictionary. That just gives me a lot of pleasure, because I was just playing around with, you know, the idea of what a warbler is, and not necessarily being very scientific or serious. And I would say, relevant to what you’re both saying, is that it’s this kind of journey that shouldn’t feel like a destination. Without being too cliché.
Because of my novel Annihilation coming out, I suddenly got to talk a lot about environmental stuff involving Florida, and some of that was really good, you know? I got to do some investigative journalism that was really good for environmental stuff. But after a while, you can also kind of get pegged as that one thing, and I feel like that has its dangers. Because then you begin to inhabit this role of quote, unquote “expert,” even though you’re not really. You just know this one part of it, and you happen to write fiction.
You talked about different life cycles and ecosystems and organisms, Amy L., kind of inspiring the structures of your work, and I feel the same way. I think it’s really a great way of getting outside of traditional ways of looking at narrative and finding something more adventurous.
For me, it’s been kind of about water, because, in Florida, water is everywhere. Like, literally, if you have a hurricane on the coast, it’s going to be carried underground, so you have flooding, like, fifty miles inland. The whole state basically is just on this, you know . . . floating on water in an aquifer kind of way. And in Oregon, it’s more about, for me at least, the way water is powerful on the coast. Something that looks like it’s very innocent can sweep you out to sea. The way the water even looks, even the way the waves look, it’s so different. I’ve spent a lot of time on the coast, just basically sketching the water with words to try to get at what feels so fundamentally different. And in doing so, I’ve actually come across different ways of creating narrative, just through those observations. I don’t know how to describe it exactly, but the different cycles—the way the geology kind of manifests with the water suggests such different kinds of stories. It’s just something I know, at a kind of instinctual level. I can’t really articulate what that difference is, but it’s exciting, you know?
Nezhukumatathil
I love that, Jeff, and I can’t articulate it any better than you, but one thing I have recently done with my grad students is instead of a text, I had them get a watercolor set and brushes. And our first assignment is not reading or writing a poem. I have them look up a tutorial—because I’m not an artist myself—on how to paint one water droplet. And so if you haven’t done that, I don’t know if you’re an artist or anything like that, but Amy, you could do this too. It’s a very humbling experience if you don’t know how to just naturally paint a water droplet, and to make it real life so it looks like it’s 3-D on the page. Students say to this day, and I don’t know how I feel about this, because . . . more than any lecture, or more than any book or text or lesson, they said that that water droplet lesson shaped how they look at poems. How to build different colors and layers, and when to wipe away and dab up the excess. I don’t know how to exactly articulate it, but they have all told me that it serves as a fitting metaphor of how to make a poem, or how to make any writing. To really supersaturate it with color, or to take it away. No matter how many lectures I gave, they weren’t getting it. But doing it themselves through a different medium about something in the outdoors really was like an unlearning, because all of them are like, “Oh, I was the best in undergrad, or I was the star student,” you know? You might get an exception here and there of an artist—a visual artist—but overall, they’re like, “What? We didn’t sign up for this. We don’t know watercolors.”
VanderMeer
It’s a good example of another thing too, which is I feel like we sometimes lose touch with the tactile right in front of us. I’ve had students where we’ll be in a workshop experience, and I’ll be like, “Well, you have this description of a tree that’s actually pretty important to your character. But I’m not actually convinced you’ve touched a tree recently,” and I try to couch it, you know, in a nice way, and then we’ll go outside, and I’ll be like . . . “Just touch this tree! That’s all you have to do.”
And that’s one thing when you’re writing about the outdoors that I try to emphasize sometimes too, like, there’s probably something right outside your door, no matter where you are, that is connected. Something from the nonhuman outdoor world that can resonate, no matter how small, you know?
Nezhukumatathil
Exactly. Like, it doesn’t have to be this rare orchid only found in Borneo or something.
Abdurraqib
Oh, I love that, y’all. That was beautiful and rich. And Aimee, I don’t think you strayed too far away. That’s how it goes—we all come back.
Can we shift a little bit? Maybe step back and just look at nature writing in general? So not necessarily thinking about your work, but also thinking about the broader context. How have you seen the demand or curiosity or interest in nature writing shift or grow recently? Just what do you see that people are interested in reading? What are you noticing?
“Nature is not something way out there that only a few people get to write about.”
Nezhukumatathil
It’s hard for me to give an overview of, you know, what publishing wants or doesn’t, because I try to stay away from numbers and things like that. But I know when I was in grad school, absolutely, I can remember people in workshops who shall remain nameless were like, “Oh, you’re trying to be Mary Oliver?” And that’s in the nineties, as if that was like a bad thing, or it was very dismissive, you know, I wasn’t writing about cigarettes or walking the streets of New York alone.
So, I don’t know if it’s indicative of anything except for the fact that I know there’s been . . . just more awareness, I think. The internet and social media helps that as well. This notion of us being all connected, and that nature is not something way out there that only a few people get to write about. It’s more like . . . we all have access to it, you know? Even if you live in a city. And now it’s not something to be looked down upon as it was? I can’t even tell you, in the late nineties, it was hard to be writing about the outdoors without being dismissed.
The four of us are certainly not the first and we won’t be the last to write about the outdoors, but I think the idea of who can write about the outdoors and whose essays or novels or poems get taken has become a lot more expansive. Before, it used to be like, “Oh, if you are an arborist, maybe who happened to write a novel, then sure, you’ll get published.” Like, there had to be some specialty, you know, and I kind of love that. When I give talks at schools, I very much absolutely say: I am not an ornithologist. I regularly annoy ornithologists with my bird calls because they’re not Audubon-approved. But at the same time, I don’t think this would have happened twenty years ago. I work with the Audubon now, you know? I think that’s really great. I’m writing poems for them about migration, and I think there’s just been a cultural shift that you don’t have to be the expert to write about the thing. I wrote a collection of food essays. I am not a chef by any means. I think publishing in general has just become a little bit more expansive. I mean, I’m a poet in Mississippi, so I try to stay away from all that hullabaloo and things like that.
Abdurraqib
Yeah. And my question wasn’t just about what is being published right now, just what are people . . . hungry for, I guess? But I do feel like there’s definitely been a shift, like what you’re saying, Aimee, in terms of who feels like they can write about the outdoors. But then I never know if I’m only seeing this shift because those are the people I’m around, and that’s what they want to read. Anyway, I’m curious to hear from Amy L. and Jeff about your take on that question. How is the interest or curiosity about nature writing or outdoors writing shifting?
VanderMeer
I don’t know what people are looking for, but I like your answer, Aimee, about it sort of widening and mixing and broadening, and you don’t have to be an expert to go outdoors. I mean, it’s democratic. It’s a democracy! It’s available to everybody, that’s what I love about it.
Yeah, it’s always tough to tell, but I do think that there’s a greater variety of voices. I started publishing in the eighties and nineties, and I can tell you there definitely wasn’t a variety of voices then. It’s great that we’re getting a lot of different perspectives and points of view now.
First of all, from living in north Florida so long, I can tell you there was a real need for more environmental education and messaging, and just basic PSAs. It was shocking to me when I went to the coast of Georgia and there was so much environmental messaging along the islands and the coastline there that was protected, and of course, in part, it was because it was a very built-up, rich area. So there’s this kind of weird contradiction of, like, “Oh, they’ve got great environmental messaging, and they also have mostly homes that are million-dollar homes,” and all the contradictions that go with that.
But what I have found is that a lot of people really are hungry for the right way to do things. No matter what form they get that information in. And I think that’s only growing. You know, when I post things about the harmfulness of pesticides or certain herbicides or natural remedies for things, it’s like, one of my most popular social media things. There was also an article about how if you really hate yellow jackets, instead of pouring petrol down the—I used to be British [laughs]—I mean, gas into their thing, just put a little dab of peanut butter on the outside of the ground nest, and squirrels or skunks or whatever will smell that, and they will eat them all. It works most of the time, but it’s interesting because it turns out certain raccoon cultures do not recognize this, and they don’t eat yellow jackets.
But my point is that people have always responded really positively to that, and when I do events, sometimes in the signing line they’re not talking about the novels—they’re talking about the environmental messaging, whether it was through articles or social media. Which is fine by me. It’s really quite gratifying to see that people want this, that they’ll respond to it. And then they’ll tell you about it as well! It’s just encouraging to know that there is a response. And I think, probably, all three of you get more of that than I do, because I mostly am working through the fiction.
Abdurraqib
Yeah, I cannot imagine a raccoon that doesn’t . . . Oh, well, I guess they’ll eat the peanut butter, right? They just won’t eat the yellow jackets.
VanderMeer
That’s right, and here’s the thing that’s really funny: I tried an experiment. There was a ravine behind my house in Florida—it didn’t really have a lot of access to birds’ nests and stuff. I put a hard-boiled egg out there, and [the raccoons] played with it for three nights—I saw it on the trail cam—before one of them thought to break it open. I was just astonished. So, anyway, sorry, that’s a total aside, but . . .
Abdurraqib
I love it.
At the beginning, we started with you all talking, in different ways, about your histories and your identities and how they have shaped your connection to the outdoors. I’m curious if you could share how aspects of your identity or your personal history shape how you write about the outdoors.
Nezhukumatathil
Gosh, that’s a good question. I will say that my friends who have known me the longest would say it’s absolutely no surprise I write what I write. I mean, I literally have crashed my bike into walls or down a ditch because I’ve been looking at a flower, or the color of the sunset. I think it is also hilarious to me that I still find it contagious when I say, “Wow, look at that,” or just express astonishment. One hundred percent, it’s just contagious to whoever I’m with. And I love that in a time when there’s also some negative things that are contagious, like despair and pessimism, “we can’t do anything about the world” or whatever, we have to also remember that being astonished is also contagious. It’s not a direct answer to your question, but it’s what keeps me wanting to write, excited to write. I mean, it’s not a project, it’s not something I sit down and say, “How to save the planet through my laptop or notebook.” I just find I write what I love, and I find that all the writers that I adore and admire so much—present company included—practice a close attention. And close attention is the closest thing to love, you know? And so I think that’s something that unites the stories and the essays and the poems that I adore so much. They make me look at the world the new fresh ways because of their close attention, because of their love, even if it’s a sadness or grief, or something like that, that close attention. Gosh, that’s so exciting. And we get all that from twenty-six letters. And that is also inspiring, that just shuffling those letters around. I just get so excited about that.
VanderMeer
I mean, I think the novels are, maybe there’s always a secret autobiography to them. People don’t really think about that, you know, given the subject matter sometimes, but every detail of the landscape and the natural world in the novels is firsthand. Every last detail, even if it’s been transformed in some way. And a lot of times it’s a very . . . kind of biodiverse or almost overwhelming amount of detail, especially in a book like Annihilation.
I grew up in Fiji and then came to Florida in places that are really wild, and I never knew any place that wasn’t just teeming with life, and that’s been kind of a privilege, in a way. Like, I didn’t realize until after Annihilation came out just how lucky I’d been because there are people who, rightly so, were supposed to be tense and a little terrified by some of the situations, but there were others who were simply terrified by the fecundity of life that was described, and that was kind of eye-opening.
And the fact that someone from Tallahassee or somewhere in north Florida who was living somewhere else now would read Annihilation, and they would find it not frightening in the least, but find it nostalgic. Like it was their own secret autobiography too. That was kind of eye-opening, and . . . I don’t know if I’m really answering the question so much, but that’s something that I think about, and something that I think is important for me to convey. All that beauty and the fact that, in a way, we’re told sometimes, or the subtext is that quote, unquote “nature,” the nonhuman world, is very fragile. But in actual fact, it’s really strong, it’s just under constant bombardment. So, kind of showing it in its strength for me is really important.
Abdurraqib
I love it.
Leach
I think what I love about writing about nature is the way it kind of gets me out of my identity. It helps me escape from my identity, like I was talking about before. When I was first in graduate school, I was trying to write about myself. I got to the bottom of that right away. But it was when I started writing about the gregarious goat, or the solitary panda, that I felt myself sort of being opened up and let out of myself.
In my last book, I wrote about my identity growing up Seventh-day Adventist and fundamentalism. And I talk about how the forest sort of facilitated my exit from that—from fundamentalism. Fundamentalism or dogma says there’s one way of looking at things, whereas time spent in nature with all its variety and miscellaneous beings and perspectives subverts dogma. And fundamentalism just crumbles in contrast with the higgledy-piggledy nature of nature. I just read that higgledy-piggledy describes what it feels like to herd pigs. [laughs]
In a couple of Shakespeare’s plays, people start out in the city with all these rules and regulations and people telling them what to do and what not to do, and who to marry and who not to marry. And then in the third act, they go to the forest, where they are exempt from all the rules and regulations, so I feel like for me, taking nature as my subject has also facilitated that kind of escape from the constricting rules of whatever. Culture, academia, religion.
Abdurraqib
Thank you, Aimee and Jeff and Amy! We’ve had such a really beautiful, wide-ranging conversation. And I know I crafted the questions, but I was hoping that you all would kind of take with them and do as you wanted to, and so I appreciate all that you offered in this time together. Oh! I want to do this thing! We have a little bit of time left, and I wanted to do this rapid questions thing, if you all would be down for that. So this is something I’ve taken from Phuc Tran—he’s a memoirist and a writer who lives here in Maine. He was interviewing someone fairly recently, I can’t remember who, and he shared this rapid question thing he does all the time when he’s interviewing people. I loved it so much that I’ve been adopting it. So I will ask a question, and it will be a quick question, and then you just give me your responses, and we’ll just go Aimee N., Amy L., and then Jeff. How about that?
Nezhukumatathil
Great!
Abdurraqib
All right, first question. Sweet, salty, or savory?
Nezhukumatathil
Salty.
Leach
Salty.
VanderMeer
Salty.
Abdurraqib
Mixtape or playlist?
Nezhukumatathil
Oh, gosh, I’m a child of the eighties, mixtape, for sure.
Leach
Playlist.
VanderMeer
Mixtape.
Abdurraqib
All right. Jeff, this is inspired by you and the two places you’ve most recently lived. Humidity or clamminess?
Nezhukumatathil
Humidity.
Leach
Humidity.
VanderMeer
[laughs] I can’t believe I’m saying this . . . clamminess.
Abdurraqib
Okay, last question—and this is a little bit more complicated. When I say, “the color red,” what do you think of?
Nezhukumatathil
Oh, that’s a good one. First thought . . . first thought . . . honeysuckle.
Leach
Hollyhocks.
VanderMeer
The burst of red on this Anna hummingbird that was buzzing me the other day.
Samaa Abdurraqib, PhD, (she/her) is based in Wabanaki Territory (Maine). She’s the editor of From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast and coeditor of the forthcoming collection Cape Cod to Nova Scotia: Art, Ecology, Poetry of the Gulf of Maine (2027). Her chapbook, Towards a Retreat, was published by Diode Editions in August 2025 and was named as the 2026 Eric Hoffer Chapbook Award winner. Abdurraqib is a certified Maine Master Naturalist and is the executive director of Maine Humanities. She is always listening for birdsong.
Amy Leach grew up in Texas and earned her MFA from the Nonfiction Writing Program at the University of Iowa. Her work has appeared in The Best American Essays, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, and numerous other publications, including Granta, A Public Space, Orion, Tin House, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. She is a recipient of a Whiting Writers’ Award, a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award, and a Pushcart Prize. She is the author of Things That Are (Milkweed Editions), The Everybody Ensemble (FSG), and The Salt of the Universe (FSG), a finalist for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay. She lives in Bozeman, Montana.
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the New York Times bestselling author of two illustrated collections of essays: Bite by Bite and World of Wonders, chosen as Barnes & Noble’s Book of the Year and as a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. She has published four award-winning poetry collections and spent a decade serving as the poetry editor for environmental magazines, first for Orion and then Sierra. A professor of English and creative writing for more than twenty-five years, she gives firefly tours for Mississippi State Parks and lives in Oxford, Mississippi, with her family. Her most recent collection of poetry, Night Owl, is out now.
Jeff VanderMeer is the New York Times bestselling author of Hummingbird Salamander; the Borne novels (Borne, The Strange Bird, and Dead Astronauts); and the Southern Reach series (Annihilation, Authority, Acceptance, Absolution), the first volume of which won the Nebula Award and Shirley Jackson Award and was adapted into a movie by Paramount. He has spoken at MIT, Columbia, Yale, and Vanderbilt, and gave the 2024 John Hersey Memorial Address (Key West Literary Seminar) and 2025 Walter Harding Lecture at SUNY Geneseo. Environmental nonfiction by VanderMeer has appeared in Time, The Nation, Current Affairs, LA Times, and Esquire, among others.