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Articles by Miranda Schmidt
Miranda Schmidt’s music playlist for their novel Leafskin
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book. Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Roxane Gay, and many others. Miranda Schmidt’s novelLeafskin is a remarkable debut, climate fiction imaginatively drawn fro both folklore and our present day crises.
7 Folkloric Novels About Humans Merging with Nature
Reading Lists In these stories, humans embrace the wild and become something more In the old tales, humans come together with animals and plants, mountains and rivers, rain and sky. The wood nymph, Daphne, turns into a laurel tree to escape the pursuit of a god. Seal women slough off their selkie skins to live on land for a time. Some traditions even tell of the first humans being made from trees. Folklore has a way of muddling binaries.
Rooting for Words
Words are human creations. And yet, they have nonhuman roots. From mythic associations to sonic rhymes, our human words can also, perhaps, bring us into a space of deeper interconnectedness. In 2017, writer Robert MacFarlane and artist Jackie Morris collaborated on The Lost Words: A Spell Book. This beautiful book was conceived as a kind of linguistic rewilding.
How My Depression Ruined Animal Crossing: New Horizons | Chris Karnadi
I wasted no time starting Animal Crossing: New Horizons. Waiting for the game for months, I felt an anticipation only heightened as the world went into lockdown. I was hoping for a virtual sanctuary to share with friends, but when I finally set up my island, I came face to face with my first villager, a gorilla wearing a pink swim cap and sunglasses named Rocket. Classed as one of the ‘superhero’ villagers available in the game, Rocket kept on yelling at me about the importance of exercise.
In the Dream House by Carmen Maria Machado
In the Dream House Carmen Maria Machado Graywolf Press | November 5, 2019 How do you tell a story you don’t have the language for? So many queer stories fall into this space of elusiveness. They don’t fit into expected forms or structures, and many queer writers must be inventive to tell the true shape of their experience.
For a Freelancer in the Gig Economy, There’s More at Stake Than a Paycheck | Jake Pitre
A woman in the office I work at has been calling me “Gerald” for about a year. My name is not Gerald. I tried telling her this a couple of times, but she continued to say, “Hi, Gerald,” when I would see her, so eventually I just stopped correcting her. Doesn’t seem worth it. I only work here a few days per week. Technically, I’m not even an actual employee.
Reading My Way Into a Queer Literary Lineage | Miranda Schmidt
Fourteen I’ll never remember exactly how I got the book. My mom must have given it to me. Or I stumbled over it on one of her shelves. It is an old copy, paperback, with some of the pages falling out. The small volume has that odd musty scent, slightly sweet, that worn books with yellowing pages always seem to have. It is an immediately mysterious book. It whispers to me in a language I don’t yet understand. It murmurs hidden histories that I have yet to uncover.
Living with Climate Change in the Forests of Our Burning World | Miranda Schmidt
This is Tree Talk, a monthly column by Miranda Schmidt which explores human connections with trees through science, history, folklore, and a queer feminist lens. Fire In summer 2017, the Eagle Creek Fire tore through the Columbia Gorge right outside Portland. Set by teenagers and fueled by drought, this fire was only one of many that ran up and down the west coast for months, choking the air with smoke and ash, decimating woodlands, driving humans and animals alike from their homes.
Finding Sanctuary in Cemeteries, the Forests of the Dead | Miranda Schmidt
Like my mother before me, I’m a cemetery walker. In theLone Fir Cemetery of Portland, Oregon, which also doubles as Portland’s second largest arboretum, volunteers give Saturday tours and annual Halloween performances that are really local history lessons in spooky disguise. On these tours, you can learn how bodies from Portland’s original, marshy cemeteries were moved to this higher ground.
How Trees Complicate Our Understanding of Gender | Miranda Schmidt
This is Tree Talk, a new monthly column by Miranda Schmidt which explores human connections with trees through history, folklore, science, and a queer feminist lens. Origin Story People came from trees. According to the Norse tale of Ask and Embla, when the gods first created us they fashioned us from wood. In this story, the first man was made from an ash tree and the first woman was made from an elm. In the Irish version of the story, the first man was alder and the first woman rowan.
Alternate Shakespearean Endings – Electric Literature
Amelia Gray and Miranda Schmidt’s 300-word love stories are the finale of our 300th Issue For the 300th issue of Recommended Reading, which happens to fall on Valentine’s Day, we opened submissions to your 300-word stories of love and heartbreak. Every day this week, we’ll publish two of our favorites from the nearly 500 submissions we received, along with contributions from three greats of flash fiction, Lydia Davis, Amelia Gray, and Kathy Fish.
The Girls Who Turned into Trees
If you enjoy reading Electric Literature, join our mailing list! We’ll send you the best of EL each week, and you’ll be the first to know about upcoming submissions periods and virtual events. Novel Gazing is Electric Literature’s personal essay series about the way reading shapes our lives. This time, we asked: What book was your feminist awakening? 1. A Warning I have to tell it slantwise. Straight on, you will not understand. You have not understood. You do not have the language. Listen close, now.
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