We’re very happy to announce that poet, naturalist, and longtime friend of Milkweed Editions John Caddy can add another accolade to his ongoing work in literature and the for environment. He was chosen as the McKnight Foundation 2012 Distinguished Artist.

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Summer is the season for new journeys, from carefree amusement park daytrips to long-haul cross-country drives, expeditions that cast off the familiar molds imposed by families and careers, if only for a day or a week. Deni Béchard, the author of Milkweed Editions’ two newest books, understands the allure of the uncertain path ahead and the alienation that can come when you follow it. Both books—Cures for Hunger, a memoir, and Vandal Love, his debut novel—confront the familial ghosts that haunt the wanderer living life at the whim of the open road. At the onset of summer, you couldn’t ask for two better books.

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As Though She Were Sleeping—the eleventh novel by Lebanese playwright, social critic, and fiction author Elias Khoury—is a tale of dreams and disaster in Palestine before the establishment of Israel in 1948. He recently stopped at Open Book in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to read from As Though She Were Sleeping. Introducing the book, Khoury talks about his love for the novel’s main character, why dreams have deep ramifications when awake, how and why writing should be a form of justice, why literature is “a field of mirrors,” and how readers and writers play opposite roles from those they think they play.

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hether contemplating a moth’s mazy course across a grocery store parking lot, comparing gods to donkeys, or compiling the taxonomy for a bestiary of fantastical creatures, Amy Leach delights the imagination in Things That Are, her forthcoming collection of extraordinary essays that practically begs for enchanting art. Nate Christopherson’s pen-and-ink illustrations for the book radiate a dynamic wholeness, a feeling that the entire scope of the wild world can be wrangled into a three-inch square, that inky black expanses and ghostly white traces can channel a primal lifeforce. Amy Wolner, a Milkweed intern, interviewed Christopherson about his artistic process and why his art jibes especially well with Leach’s poignant, ever-surprising ruminations on (to quote another great observer) life, the universe, and everything.

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Replacing light bulbs, collecting rainwater, recycling paper, or choosing public transportation can seem futile—nay, foolish—when the sum of one’s daily sacrifices are overshadowed by the latest oil spill or climate-induced wildfire run amok. But just like our organization, the staff at Milkweed Editions is committed to treading a lighter foot on the planet. Few of us drive ourselves to work, even on the harshest of Minnesota winter mornings. We’re a rowdy bunch of avid cyclists, carpoolers, persevering pedestrians, and bus-riding idealists.

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