Hearth
A multicultural anthology, edited by Susan O’Connor and Annick Smith, about the enduring importance and shifting associations of the hearth in our world.
A hearth is many things: a place for solitude; a source of identity; something we make and share with others; a history of ourselves and our homes. It is the fixed center we return to. It is just as intrinsically portable. It is, in short, the perfect metaphor for what we seek in these complex and contradictory times—set in flux by climate change, mass immigration, the refugee crisis, and the dislocating effects of technology.
Featuring original contributions from some of our most cherished voices—including Terry Tempest Williams, Bill McKibben, Pico Iyer, Natasha Trethewey, Luis Alberto Urrea, and Chigozie Obioma—Hearth suggests that empathy and storytelling hold the power to unite us when we have wandered alone for too long. This is an essential anthology that challenges us to redefine home and hearth: as a place to welcome strangers, to be generous, to care for the world beyond one’s own experience.
Like this book? Sign up for occasional updates
Annick Smith
Annick Smith is the author of several books, including Homestead, In This We Are Native, Big Bluestem, and most recently Crossing the Plains with Bruno. She is also the editor of Headwaters: Montana Writers on Water & Wilderness, and coeditor with Susan O’Connor of The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie and, most recently, Hearth: A Global Conversation on Identity, Community, and Place. She lives in Bonner, Montana.
Susan O’Connor
Susan O’Connor is an environmental and arts advocate. She is coeditor with Annick Smith of Hearth: A Global Conversation on Identity, Community, and Place and The Wide Open: Prose, Poetry, and Photographs of the Prairie. She lives in Missoula, Montana.
Barry Lopez
Barry Lopez was an essayist, author, and short story writer, and has traveled extensively in both remote and populated parts of the world. He was the author of Arctic Dreams, winner of the National Book Award; Of Wolves and Men, a National Book Award finalist, and numerous other works of fiction and nonfiction.
Praise and Prizes
You Might Enjoy
In 1964 the author came to Montana with her husband and their boys. In a fertile valley where meadows tip downward toward the Big Blackfoot River, they found what they had dreamed of: 163 acres of ranchland with a view of a creek, hills, and the…
An astonishing, vital book about Antarctica, climate change, and motherhood from the author of Rising, finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
From beloved, award-winning poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil comes a debut work of nonfiction—a collection of essays about the natural world, and the way its inhabitants can teach, support, and inspire us.
A vibrant collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history and memory.
From Margaret Renkl comes an unusual, captivating portrait of a family—and of the cycles of joy and grief that inscribe human lives within the natural world.