About the cover: The photo of a quokka was taken on Rottnest Island in Western Australia. Quokkas (Setonix brachyurus) are small marsupials that were mistakenly identified by early Europeans as small cats or rats. Today, the quokka is a protected species and a major tourist draw to Rottnest Island. And while a growing number of tourists arrive seeking selfies with these largely docile creatures, often going as far as to feed or pet them, fortunately a dedicated organization of volunteers is working to educate the public and to protect these amazing animals.
Writing for Animals
New perspectives for writers and instructors to educate and inspire
A unique anthology of articles and essays to inspire animal-themed creative writing
Despite all we know about the sentience of animals, society tends to view and treat nonhuman animals as lesser creatures. And for society to change its views, writers must change their views. We must look closely at how we depict animals and ask ourselves difficult questions. For example, are we using animals for our writing in a way that is authentic and fair? Or are we using them for our own purposes, leading to further misconceptions and abuses?
As our awareness awakens about animals’ intelligence, sensitivity, and social and emotional lives, literature is beginning to reflect this change in awareness. Yet little has been written about the process of writing about animals, from crafting point of view to giving animals realistic voices.
Writers face many questions and choices in their work, from how to educate without being didactic to how to develop animals as characters for an audience that still views them as ingredients. In this book, writers will find myriad voices to assist them in writing about animals, from tips about craft to understanding the responsibility of writing about animals.
“[John] Yunker has gathered an all-star team for this valuable how-to book.”
—The Revelator
Instructor Resources
Writing for Animals is popular with both writing and animal studies programs. For more information about each essay, please feel free to check out the contributor Q&As on our blog.
Request an exam copy.
Reviews
“Writing for Animals provides impetus and direction for writers who are ready to get on with the doing. It is practical. It’s process-focused. It makes an urgent case for writing about the beings we share the planet with now—before it’s too late, and before there’s no one left to write for.”
—The Australasian Animal Studies Association Journal
“How can fiction writers give authentic voices to animals and the issues that affect them? Playwright and novelist [John] Yunker has gathered an all-star team for this valuable how-to book.”
—The Revelator
Contributors
Marybeth Holleman
Author of “Other Nations”
Marybeth Holleman is the author of The Heart of the Sound, co-author of Among Wolves, and co-editor of Crosscurrents North. A Pushcart-Prize nominee, her essays, poems, and articles have appeared in dozens of journals, magazines, and anthologies, among them Orion, Christian Science Monitor, Sierra, Literary Mama, North American Review, AQR, and The Future of Nature, as well as on National Public Radio. Holleman has taught creative writing and women’s studies at the University of Alaska and has written for nonprofits on environmental issues from polar bears to oil spills. A North Carolina transplant, she has lived in Alaska for more than twenty-five years.
Sangamithra Iyer
Author of “Are You Willing?”
Sangamithra Iyer is a writer and civil engineer. She is the author of The Lines We Draw (Hen Press), was a finalist for the 2016 Siskiyou Prize for New Environmental Literature, and is the editor of Satya: The Long View (2016). Sangu served as the assistant editor of Satya from 2004 to 2007, and as an associate for the public policy action tank Brighter Green. Her writing has been published by n+1, Creative Nonfiction, Waging Nonviolence, Hippocampus Magazine, Local Knowledge, Our Hen House, and VegNews. Her essays have been anthologized in Primate People: Saving Nonhuman Primates through Education, Advocacy and Sanctuary; Sister Species: Women, Animals and Social Justice; and Letters to a New Vegan. She was a recipient of a Jerome Foundation literature travel grant and an artist residency at the Camargo Foundation. She lives in Queens, where she works on watershed protection and water supply infrastructure planning for New York City.
Lisa Johnson
Author of “Animals that Work in Stories”
Hunter Liguore
Author of “Writing Animals Where You Are”
Photo credit: Michael Edwards
Joanna Lilley
Author of “Do We Have the Right to Write About Animals?”
Joanna Lilley is the author of the poetry collections The Fleece Era (Brick Books), which was nominated for the Fred Cogswell Award for Excellence in Poetry, and If There Were Roads (Turnstone Press), and the short story collection The Birthday Books (Hagios Press). Her debut novel, Worry Stones, will be published in fall 2018 by Ronsdale Press. Joanna emigrated from the UK to Yukon in Canada twelve years ago. Find her at www.joannalilley.com.
Alex Lockwood
Author of “With a Hope to Change Things: An Exploration of the Craft of Writing about Animals with the Founders of Zoomorphic Magazine”
Alex Lockwood is the author of The Pig in Thin Air (Lantern Books), an exploration of the place of the body in animal advocacy, as well as senior lecturer in journalism at the Centre for Research in Media and Cultural Studies, Sunderland University, UK. He has published widely on human-animal relations and is currently working on a series of novels concerned with human-animal conflict.
Photo credit: Lynn Nakamura
Rosemary Lombard
Author of “A Case for More Reality in Writing for Animals”
Rosemary Lombard is an animal behavior researcher/ herpetologist and has worked as a public school and university teacher, a naturalist on San Francisco Bay, and in the areas of water pollution and turtle cognition, among many others. A Northwest native, she has also lived in Idaho, the Midwest, New York, and California. She currently lives and works with fifteen turtle collaborators at an independent behavioral lab in Hillsboro, Oregon.
Beth Lyons
Author of “Real Advocacy within Fantasy Worlds”
Beth Lyons is a former English literature teacher, award-winning poet, and traveler who now lives and writes in Portland, Oregon. She is the author of three fantasy novels and three science fiction novellas, all available via Amazon Kindle. In addition, she is a fiction editor, teaches workshops on editing and creative writing, and currently moderates an online writing forum.
Photo credit: Robert Long
Paula MacKay
Author of “Rewilding Literature: Catalyzing Compassion for Wild Predators through Creative Nonfiction”
Paula MacKay completed her MFA in Creative Writing at Pacific Lutheran University in 2015. For the past seventeen years, she has surveyed bears, wolverines, wolves, and other wildlife with her husband, Robert Long, with whom she co- edited Noninvasive Survey Methods for Carnivores (Island Press, 2008). Paula has written about animals and conservation for numerous organizations, scientific books and journals, and magazines. Her essay “My Sister’s Shoes” was recently published in Siblings: Our First Macrocosm. Click here to visit Paula’s website.
Midge Raymond
Author of “No One Mourns an Unnamed Animal: Why Naming Animals Might Help Save Them”
Midge Raymond is the author of the novel My Last Continent and the award-winning short-story collection Forgetting English. Her fiction, articles, and essays have appeared in TriQuarterly, American Literary Review, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times magazine, the Chicago Tribune, Poets & Writers, LitHub, Zoomorphic, The Daily Beast, Daily Review (Australia), Barefoot Vegan, VegNews, and many other publications. Click here to visit Midge’s website.
Photo credit: Elizabeth Sills
Hannah Sandoval
Author of “Rabies Bites: How Stephen King Made a Dog a Compelling Main Character”
Hannah Sandoval is a full-time freelance manuscript editor and ghostwriter and the founder of PurpleInkPen. She has a BA in English and is a proud member of the International Association of Professional Book Editors. Her novel Arcamira is the Best Fantasy Series winner of the 2017 Channillo Awards. Her Pembroke Welsh Corgi, Vanellope, embodies more sass than her owner could ever hope to.
Kipp Wessel
Author of “Meeting the Wild Things Where They Are”
Kipp Wessel’s debut novel, First, You Swallow the Moon, a novel of heartbreak and wilderness, was a BookLife Prize in Fiction finalist and earned a Writer’s Digest first-place award. His short stories have been published in a dozen commercial and literary magazines, and he’s taught fiction writing at the University of Montana (where he completed his MFA), the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and regional community arts programs.
John Yunker
Author of “Giving Animals a Voice: Letters from an Ashland Deer”
John Yunker writes plays, short stories, and novels focused on human/animal relationships. He is a co-founder of Ashland Creek Press, author of the novel The Tourist Trail, and editor of two fiction anthologies, Among Animals and Among Animals 2. His plays have been staged at such venues as Centre Stage New Play Festival, the Mountain Playhouse Comedy Festival, Studio Players Theatre, and the 2017 ATHE (Association for Theatre in Higher Education) conference. His teleplay Sanctuary was performed at the 2017 Compassion Arts Festival in New York, and his short stories have been published in Phoebe, Qu, Flyway, Antennae, and other journals. Click here to visit John’s website.