The Plight of the Desert Penguin: Caught Between Extraction and El Niño

Unlike the remote Antarctic penguins of Happy Feet and March of the Penguins, most of the 18 penguin species on this planet live uncomfortably close to humans, along the southern coastlines of South America, South Africa, Australia, and New Zealand.

Here's an in-depth account from one author's experiences with these scam book club invites.
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We've also posted several articles about emails we've received which, thanks to AI, have become remarkably deceptive. Please read and share with other writers.
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​AI scams are coming for you​
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​Another email to watch out for​
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​Yet another scam to be aware of​

Writing for Animals: October 2026

Registration is open for our next live Writing for Animals class! This program will take place on four Sundays in October via Zoom.

The Parliament of Mice by Robert Epstein

Reviewed by JoeAnn Hart​

When was the last time you read a fable, or, more likely, had one read one to you? As a child? In Folklore 101 at college? Maybe it’s time to revisit. Animals have always been used in storytelling as a mirror on our own sorry human selves, and The Parliament of Mice, a Fable, by Robert Epstein is no exception. While keeping within the formal syntax of a traditional fable, the writing itself is lovelier than that. Even the epilogue sings: “Somewhere under the sun on a petty scratch of earth hunched an old house and an old barn that listed towards each other as if they longed to collapse in an embrace.”

Fires in the Night by Matthew Wolfe

Review by Midge Raymond​

Matthew Wolfe’s Fires in the Night: The Earth Liberation Front, the FBI, and a Secret History of Eco-Sabotage is a compelling work of narrative nonfiction, meticulously researched and written with the tension of a thriller. Amid the stories of ELF members who stealthily committed arson in the name of animals and the planet are the stories of the law enforcement officers whom the Elves outwitted and outran at every step—until they didn’t. And underneath the drama is a stark message: the planet is imperiled, and those most passionate about saving it have been labeled terrorists.

The Future of the Past by Thijs Weststeijn

Review by Ben Mc Cabe​

A rather clichéd question consistently asked of curators, connoisseurs and collectors in interviews is: ‘if this place was on fire, what would you save?’ The chosen piece is inevitably of deep personal, cultural, religious or monetary value, and the interviewer moves along within the generic interview framework. However, what if a whole village, town, area or region was on fire, what would a community wish to save? What would the rest of the world wish for that community to save? Professor Thijs Weststeijn’s The Future of the Past – when cultural heritage meets climate change confronts these challenging questions that the accelerating climate crisis renders increasingly urgent.

Becoming Ecological by Derek Gladwin and Kedrick James

Review by Midge Raymond​

In our writing program Writing for Animals, we talk a lot about language and how it reflects the ways we treat animals (for better and for worse) — and especially how our use of language can inspire change in the world. It is wonderful to see University of British Columbia professors Derek Gladwin and Kedrick James look at language as a way “to spark a shift in how we understand and interact with the world” in their book Becoming Ecological: Navigating Language and Meaning for Our Planet’s Future.

The Thinning by Inga Simpson

Review by JoeAnn Hart​

When the U.S. Supreme Court overturned federal abortion rights in 2025, there was a lot of chatter on social media telling women to delete their menstrual cycle apps, because the government could access that information and prosecute for a suspected abortion or miscarriage. The government would know when they were fertile. In another country, in a future time, this situation sparks the plot of The Thinning, by Inga Simpson, a novel which manages to be both horrifying and hopeful.
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Bogland by Merritt R. Turetsky

Review by Ben Mc Cabe​

As a nursling of the rural Irish landscape, I was taken with the title of Merritt R. Turetsky’s book Bogland: The Secret World That Defies Death and Protects Life as bogs were a recurrent and onerous part of my childhood. The word ‘bog’ is deeply embedded in the Irish rural psyche, evoking generational resonances of social poverty, fuel, agricultural unproductivity, folklore and the uncanny.
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