Personal Essays
I’ve written five books of personal essays over the last 4 years, all based on my daily walks in the woods. The series was originally inspired by my memory of the walks I took with my wife prior to her passing in 2015 and has since taken on a life of its own. All of these books are available for free, here, via the drop-down menu above, and in paperback form, at cost, on Amazon.com via my Amazon author’s page link, above. This Fall, Last Spring and First, Summer are also available as audiobooks here and, in the case of This Fall, on Audible.com.
In Harvest: Essays on Time from Olympia (2019) my woods-walks become scrims for my thinking about temporality, informed by a few recent books by quantum theorists and a variety of poets I happen to be reading now. I’ve posted a full “draft” of the “book,” terms I put in quotation marks for reasons that will become clear if you read the first essay “on my method.”
A Mind of Winter: Essays on the Imagination (2019) combines personal essays based on my walks in the woods around Olympia, Washington, with mini-essays on a variety of philosophers and poets theorizing on the imagination. I include a PDF of the full series.
First, Summer (2018) is my first Olympia-based book, the essays founded, as usual, on my woods-walks, this time in the majestic forests nearby my house. I wrote the essays a few months after I moved here. I include a PDF and audiobook of the series.
Last Spring (2018) is a monograph of essays I wrote during my final semester teaching before retirement, based on my walks in Boyce Park. It serves as the darker “bookend” for the processes of growth and grief I initiated with This Fall. I include a PDF and audiobook of the series.
This Fall (2015) is the collection of essays I wrote over about month’s time, after my daily walks in Boyce Park, a few miles outside of Pittsburgh, during the autumn leaf fall, in the shadow of my wife’s sudden passing the previous winter. I include a PDF and an audiobook of the series.
I’ve made several 2-3 minute slideshows with photos I took on my “standard” Olympia walks. You can view them at:
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1-7ds7WOfZjMKUst7pMIFcKvrrZoNdG78
Scholarly Books
I published two scholarly books during my career as an English professor, both still under copyright to the original publisher, so I can’t upload them here directly. My first book, Writing/Teaching, which won the CCC Outstanding Book Award the year it came out, is now available in full-text, from the publisher, in the public domain. My second book, Re-reading Poets, documents my life-long love of poetry via the many specific poets who have made my life deeper and more livable. I provide more information about these under the “Scholarly Books” drop-down, above.
Here is a thumbnail version of my academic CV, with major items only: