Home Ground: Language for an American Landscape

Barry Lopez asked 45 poets and writers to define terms that describe America’s land and water forms — phrases like flatiron, bayou, monadnock, kiss tank, meander bar, and everglade. The result is a major enterprise comprising over 850 descriptions, 100 line drawings, and 70 quotations from works by Willa Cather, Truman Capote, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, and others. Carefully researched and exquisitely written by talents such as Barbara Kingsolver, Lan Samantha Chang, Robert Hass, Terry Tempest Williams, Jon Krakauer, Gretel Ehrlich, Luis Alberto Urrea, Antonya Nelson, Charles Frazier, Linda Hogan, and Bill McKibben, Home Ground is a striking composite portrait of the landscape. At the heart of this expansive work is a community of writers in service to their country, emphasizing a language that suggests the vastness and mystery that lie beyond our everyday words.

Barry Lopez was an essayist, author, and short-story writer who traveled extensively in both remote and populated parts of the world. He is the author of Arctic Dreams, which received the National Book Award; Horizon, Of Wolves and Men, Home Ground: A Guide to the American Landscape; and eight works of fiction, including Outside, Light Action in the Caribbean, Field Notes, and Resistance. He is the author of Syntax of the River: The Pattern Which Connects with Julia Martin. His essays are collected in two books, Crossing Open Ground and About This Life. Lopez lived in western Oregon.

Debra Gwartney is the author of the memoir Live Through This, which expands the story of her relationship with her daughters that was broadcast on This American Life in 2002. Her short stories, personal narratives, essays, and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and journals. Recent publications include a memoir in Triquarterly, an essay in Modern Bride magazine, and a “Modern Love” essay in the New York Times. She is a former reporter for the Oregonian and was a nonfiction scholar at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. Her honors include fellowships from the Oregon Arts Commission, Literary Arts, the Hedgebrook Writers’ Colony, the Wurlitzer Foundation, and the American Antiquarian Society, and the John Eliot Teaching Award at Portland State University. She lives in Western Oregon.