Soul Fire Farm event

The team at Soul Fire Farm continues their integral work rooted in the agricultural traditions of the diaspora. They have "Community Work & Learn" days scheduled for May 5 and May 19, 2026, offering hands-on farming experience. Additionally, they are hosting a "Hands-On Introduction to Carpentry" specifically for the BIPOC community on May 14 to help build vital infrastructure skills.

Children of the Land: Soul Fire Farm’s Approach to Raising and Mentoring Young People

Live Online Course with Leah Penniman

DEC. 1 - 22, 2026
TUESDAYS 12 - 1:30 PM (PT)

In this live course, Leah Penniman invites participants into the teachings and stories of Soul Fire Farm, where young people are raised through shared responsibility, earth-based learning, and intergenerational cooperation. Grounded in Afro-Indigenous wisdom, the course offers caregivers and educators practical insights for nurturing children who are rooted, connected, and supported in discovering their unique paths.  The course is sponsored by Bioneers. Register here.

Biter Kalli

Photo by Kamal Ali

Mounted: On Horses, Blackness, and Liberation book by Bitter Kalli

Drawing on their personal history as a former urban equestrian, black queer person, and child of Jamaican and Filipino immigrants, essayist and art critic Bitter Kalli contends in this book that the horse should be regarded as a critical source of power and identity in black life.

Historic Anacostia Community environmental resourcefulness

In her new book, Tiny Gardens Everywhere: The Past, Present, and Future of the Self-Provisioning City, historian Kate Brown provide a history of urban food production. A striking example in the book is the Anacostia communuty in Washington, D.C. During the 1910s and 20s, black residents there faced systemic neglect from city planners who refused to provide basic infrastructure like sewers or garbage pickup. In response, these residents developed an impressively resourceful closed-loop ecosystem. They managed waste through innovative composting systems and pig farming, and engineered their own water filtration systems using roof runoff and gravel—effectively inventing sustainable urban living. As Brown notes, they “were doing all the things that would be considered green architecture today.”

Community

Bulletin Board

Cover Crop Music

Nurturing Our Environments Through Song & Seed

With Amber Rubarth, Alixa García, and Jamila Norman, Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY, Aug 7–9, 2026. 

Cultivate creativity in this immersive retreat led by musician and naturalist Amber Rubarth with guest teachers Alixa García and Jamila Norman. Inspired by the ancient agricultural practice of planting cover crops: seeds sown not for personal harvest but to enrich and protect the soil, this workshop offers a transformative lens for creative and community nourishment.

Through song, land-based learning, storytelling, and hands-on practice, participants explore how cultivating care for the ground mirrors how we nurture relationships, communities, and our inner landscapes.

For more information, see this Omega Institute program announcement. 

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New series for Rae Wynn-Grant

Wildlife ecologist Rae Wynn-Grant and  National Geographic Explorer Bertie Gregory are the leads in the Nat Geo series, Secrets of the Bears.  Premiering in spring 2027, the series will explore charismatic brown bears and secretive sun bears, and reveal new science and never-before-seen behaviors that show bears are smarter, more adaptable, and even more sociable than people ever imagined.

Dr. Rae Wynn-Grant is shown here in a detail from the cover of her Going Wild memoir.  For more about the memoir and Wynn-Grant’s like beyond the book, see the Ecollective article, Tears and fears and feeling proud.

Audrey G. Bennett is an interdisciplinary scholar whose work centers on design studies for social justice. Her latest book (2026) is Design/A Quick Immersion. For more about Bennett’s eco-community design solutions including urban farm initiatives, see this Ecollective article.

Black Birders Week Celebration

May 24-30, 2026 is National Black Birders Week.  For more about the week’s founders and mission, visit their website. 

J. Drew Lanham at the Adirondack Black Birders Celebration (May 30, 2026)

Dr. Lanham will be the featured guest for a conversation and lecture at The Wild Center in Tupper Lake, New York, to close out National Black Birders Week.  Program details are here.

Catherine Coleman Flowers Wins 2026 Reed Award for Environmental Writing

Catherine Coleman Flower, MacArthur "genius" fellow and founding director of the Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice, has been named a winner of the 2026 Phillip D. Reed Environmental Writing Award.

Flowers was honored in the Book Category for he memoir and manifesto, Holy Ground: On Activism, Environmental Justice, and Finding Hope. The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC), which grants the award, recognized Holy Ground for its "unflinching look at the sanitation crisis in rural America and its inspiring call for systemic change."

This recognition cements Flowers' status not just as a leading activist, but as a vital literary voice in the canon of environmental justice. Her work continues to shine a light on the intersection of poverty, race, and climate resilience in the American South.

Link to full announcement

Opportunities for nature-inspired and environmental justice writing

Panorama journal’s "Reflections" theme seeks essays, poetry, and "new nature writing" from historically marginalized communities to discuss environmental and climate justice. Deadline March 10, 2026. For more info: panoramajournal.org/submissions/calls

Flyway: Journal of Writing & Environment publishes poetry, fiction, nonfiction, short scripts, and visual art that explores the many complicated facets of the word environment and encourages submissions from  from diverse voices and under-represented populations, including — but not limited to — international authors, people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, those with disabilities, and the elderly.  Submission for Fall 2026 issue is 2/1/26 – 3/17/26.  For more info: https://flywayjournal.org/about/

The Dodge seeks fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, visual art, and translation focused on the environment. We’re excited by a wide range of forms and approaches, including hybrid and experimental work. We especially seek creative works that imagine a just future for the planet. Given our focus on environmental justice, we’re eager to champion emerging and marginalized voices underrepresented in magazine publishing and eco-writing, including writers and artists who are Black, Indigenous, people of color, people who are trans, gender-nonconforming, and LGBTQIA+, people with disabilities, women, and others. For more info: https://thedodge.submittable.com/submit

Ecotheo publishes poetry, prose and visual art exploresquestions of ecology and spirituality. For more info: https://www.ecotheo.org/submit

Terrain.org  welcomes submissions in English (or translation) from around the world, and particularly Indigenous, Native, Black, Brown, and other historically marginalized and underrepresented voices. They pay $50 for all contributions. For more info: https://www.terrain.org/submit/

The generous spirit of cover crop music