The Despoils of Environmental Wars

There are environmental time-bombs littered across the landscape. These authors look at some literal and figurative environmental explosions while also looking for answers to our predicament.

About the authors

KATHERINE E. STANDEFER’s debut book LIGHTNING FLOWERS was a Finalist for the Kirkus Prize in Nonfiction, named a New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice/Staff Pick, and shortlisted for the J. Anthony Lukas Work-in-Progress Prize from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism and the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard. It was named one of Oprah Magazine's Best Books of Fall 2020, selected as the Common Read at Colorado College in 2022-2023, and featured on NPR's Fresh Air and in People Magazine. Standefer earned her MFA at the University of Arizona. Her other writing has been featured in Best American Essays 2016. She was a Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good and a Marion Weber Healing Arts Fellow at the Mesa Refuge. She lives in Wyoming. READ MORE ABOUT KATHERINE

MARK POWELL is the author of six novels, including Small Treasons (Gallery/Simon and Schuster 2017)--a SIBA Okra Pick, and a Southern Living Best Book of the Year--and most recently Lioness (WVU 2021). He has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Breadloaf and Sewanee Writers' Conferences, and twice from the Fulbright Foundation to Slovakia and Romania. In 2009, he received the Chaffin Award for contributions to Appalachian literature. He has written about Southern culture and music for the Oxford American, the war in Ukraine for The Daily Beast, and his dog for Garden & Gun. He holds degrees from the Citadel, the University of South Carolina, and Yale Divinity School, and directs the creative writing program at Appalachian State University.

About the Host
Lex Orgera is a poet, essayist, book editor, and herbalist. She’s the author of two poetry collections, How Like Foreign Objects and Dust Jacket and a memoir-in-fragments, Head Case: My Father, Alzheimer’s & Other Brainstorms.