Where the Grass Still Sings

Through narrative, verse, and art, Where the Grass Still Sings celebrates the many tiny creatures that play crucial roles in our ecosystems—as well as the people on the front lines of the fight to save them.

Weaving art and science with inspiring stories of people doing their part to protect insects and the environment, author Heather Swan takes readers around the globe to highlight practical solutions to safeguard our fragile planet. Visit a sustainable coffee farm in Ecuador and a frog expert combating animal trafficking in Colombia. Explore a butterfly sanctuary in an Andean cloud forest and learn about a family of orchid farmers who are replanting a mountainside to attract native pollinators. Meet a bumblebee expert helping Wisconsin cranberry growers, a bark beetle specialist in a new-growth forest in Georgia, an entomologist collecting for the Essig Museum in California, and more. Against a backdrop of climate change, ecological injustice, and impending mass extinction, this book rekindles wonder and hope.

Featuring works by artists deeply invested in preserving the smallest beings among us, Where the Grass Still Sings is a paean to the natural world.

“Where the Grass Still Sings exhibits many ways we can give a damn about insect life. It reminds us that all manners of caring matter, can make a difference. In our climate, the familiar environmental call to care more might feel burdensome to those who could reply, ‘I do care.’ Swan’s inventive form, open-hearted tone, and specific focus might help an overwhelmed reader imagine new ways of caring, of developing myriad forms of hope.”—Grace Butler, Terrain

“A glorious call to pay attention to the wonder, mystery, and beauty of the insect world.”—Dave Goulson, author of Silent Earth: Averting the Insect Apocalypse

Heather Swan is a poet and a creative nonfiction writer. Her critically acclaimed book Where Honeybees Thrive: Stories from the Field, also published by Penn State University Press, won the Sigurd F. Olson Nature Writing Award and first prize in the Scholarly Book Category at the annual New York Book Show. She teaches writing and environmental literature at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Introduction Gallery Rosalind Monks and Invisible Intricacies

1 Invisible Extinctions: Thinking About Insects at the Essig Collection

Gallery 1 Jennifer Angus: Patterns

2 Chocolate and Coffee: Saving What Is Being Lost

Gallery 2 Lea Bradovich: Metamorphosis

3 The Forest of Orchids: Sowing Seeds of Resilience in Colombia

Gallery 3 Susan Carlson: Quilting a New Reality

4 For the Love of Frogs

Gallery 4 Claire Morgan: Dead Owls and Bluebottle Flies

5 Transformers: Beetles Changing History

Gallery 5 Edouard Martinet: Superheroes

6 Midewin: Arsenal Afterlife

Gallery 6 Emily Arthur: Haunted Landscapes

7 The Bumblebee and the Cranberry

Gallery 7 Liz Anna Kozik: Illustrating Interconnections

8 Can Agriculture Save Pollinators?

Gallery 8 Amy Spassov: The Inside Is the Outside

Afterword: Courage

Notes

Resources and Inspiration

Credits

Download a PDF sample chapter here: Introduction

Animal Studies

Nature

General Interest