Edited by Elizabeth Bradfield, CMarie Fuhrman, and Derek Sheffield. Mountaineers Press, 2023.
Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry is a book that blends art, science, and literature to celebrate the Cascadia region, which stretches from Alaska to Northern California and from the Pacific Ocean to the Continental Divide. The book is organized into 13 bioregions and includes 128 organism profiles, each with a combination of ecological prose, poetry, and black-and-white art. The guide’s organization encourages readers to consider the connections between different beings, rather than just individual species.
2024 Pacific Northwest Book Award Winner
2024 Independent Publisher Book Award Silver Medal in Anthologies
2023 Banff Mountain Book Award finalist in Mountain Fiction & Poetry
2023 Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards finalist in Nature
Elizabeth Bradfield grew up in Tacoma, Washington, and holds degrees from the University of Washington and the University of Alaska. Her years on the Salish Sea and in Southeast Alaska formed her. She is the author of the poetry collections Once Removed, Approaching Ice, Interpretive Work, Toward Antarctica, and Theorem, a collaboration with artist Antonia Contro. With Miller Oberman and Alexandra Teague, she coedited Broadsided Press: Celebrating Fifteen Years of Poetic and Artistic Collaboration, 2005–2020. Her poems have been published in the New Yorker, Atlantic Monthly, The Sun, and Orion, and her essays have appeared in National Parks Conservation Magazine and several anthologies. Bradfield’s honors include the Audre Lorde Prize and a Stegner fellowship. She runs Broadsided Press, works as a naturalist; and teaches creative writing at Brandeis University.
CMarie Fuhrman, a native of Colorado, embraces her upbringing near the Rocky Mountains, where she learned the value of wilderness from her parents. Settling in westcentral Idaho since 2011, she has woven the region’s landscapes into her identity. Advocating for environmental conservation and indigenous rights, Fuhrman collaborates with organizations protecting grizzlies, rivers, and Native women. She is the author of Camped Beneath the Dam and co-editor of Native Voices: Indigenous American Poetry, Craft and Conversations. Fuhrman has directed IKEEP at the University of Idaho, and currently serves as Associate Director of the Creative Writing Graduate Program at Western Colorado University. As a columnist for the Inlander, translations editor for Broadsided Press, and director of the Elk River Writers Workshop, she channels her passion for nature and advocacy into her literary pursuits.
Derek Sheffield, hailing from Oregon’s Willamette Valley and the shores of the Salish Sea, brings his deep connection to nature into his work. After earning an MFA in poetry from the University of Washington, he settled in central Washington near Leavenworth. Sheffield has taught English at Wenatchee Valley College since 2003, focusing on Northwest Nature Writing, blending poetry with scientific exploration alongside biologist Dr. Dan Stephens. Field residencies at sites like Loowit-Mount St. Helens and the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest, supported by the Spring Creek Project, enrich his understanding of Cascadia. A passionate hiker, birder, fisher, and forest bather, Sheffield shares his love for nature with his daughters, who often join him in creative pursuits. He is the author of acclaimed poetry collections such as Through the Second Skin and Not for Luck, and serves as poetry editor of Terrain.org, a leading online journal celebrating place-centered art and literature.
PRASE FOR CASCADIA FIELD GUIDE
Have you ever been so filled up with the wonder of a place that it wants to spill out as a song? Well, here is the songbook….A gift in reciprocity for the gifts of the land.”
—Robin Wall Kimmerer“A deeply informative and wildly exuberant visual and literary romp.”
—Ray Troll“Amazing, a wonder, a gratitude.”
—Ross Gay
