The Woods Stretched for Miles: New Nature Writing from the South

The Woods Stretched for Milesgathers essays about southern landscape and nature from nineteen writers with geographic or ancestral ties to the region. This remarkable group encompasses not only such well-known names as Wendell Berry and Rick Bass but also distinctive new voices, including Christopher Camuto, Susan Cerulean, and Eddy L. Harris.From the savannas of south Florida through the hardwood uplands of Mississippi to the coastal rivers of the Carolinas and the high mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee, the range in geography covered is equally broad. With insight and eloquence, these diverse talents take up similar themes: environmental restoration, the interplay between individual and community, the definition of wildness in an area transformed by human activity, and the meaning of our reactions to the natural world.Readers will treasure the passionate and intelligent honorings of land and nature offered by this rich anthology. With the publication ofThe Woods Stretched for Miles, southern voices establish their abiding place in the ever-popular nature writing genre.

John Lane’s writing has been published in Orion, American Whitewater, Southern Review, Terra Nova, and Fourth Genre. His books include Waist Deep in Black Water, The Woods Stretched for Miles, and Chattooga (all published by Georgia), several volumes of poetry, and Weed Time, a gathering of his essays. Lane is an associate professor of English at Wofford College.