Nature Dreaming takes us on a lively and engaging journey through California's history and across its many landscapes. Diverse voices, each with a unique perspective, add up to a chorus of joy and wonder. The listener has no choice but to sing along.
—Malcolm Margolin, Publisher, Heyday.
Nature Dreaming: Rediscovering California's Landscapes is a two-part public radio series drawing on dramatic readings of California landscape writing and commentary by prominent humanities scholars.
David Mas Masumotois an award-winning writer and organic farmer whose books include Heirlooms, Letters to the Valley, Four Seasons in Five Senses, Harvest Son, Epitaph for a Peach, and Wisdom of the Last Farmer.
Kevin Hearlereceived his A.B. degree in English at Stanford University and his M.F.A. in English (creative writing poetry) from the University of Iowa.
Ruth Nolanis Professor of English at College of the Desert in Palm Desert, California and editor of No Place for a Puritan: the Literature of California's Deserts (Heyday, 2009).
Georgiana SanchezGeorgiana Sanchez is a storyteller, poet, writer and professor of Native American Literature at California State University, Long Beach.
ShaunAnne Tangney, a California native, is currently an Associate Professor of English at Minot State University in North Dakota. Her primary scholarly interests focus on the literature of the US west.
Juan Velascoreceived his first Ph.D. in 1992 from the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain. His area of specialization was Contemporary Latin American Literature. In 1995 he received his second Ph.D. from UCLA.
Kevin Hearlereceived his A.B. degree in English at Stanford University and his M.F.A. in English (creative writing poetry) from the University of Iowa. He also completed his M.A. and Ph.D. in Literature at UC Santa Cruz.
His book of poems, Each Thing We Know Is Changed Because We Know It, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, the Yale Series of Younger Poets and the Pushcart Prize.
Jessica Teeter, a Bay Area native, graduated from Santa Clara University with a double B.A. in Theater Arts and English. Ms. Teeter is currently pursuing a masters degree in Library and Information Science at San Jose State University.
Jessica has worked with various theater companies in the area, including TheaterWorks, Festival Theater Ensemble, Renegade Theatre Experiment, and City Lights.
Dan Maloney, a native San Franciscan, received his bachelor's degree in Theatre Arts from Santa Clara University, where he now works as the scheduling director of Media Services.
Maloney has performed extensively throughout the South Bay and Peninsula, most notably with San Jose Repertory Theatre, San Jose Stage Company and TheatreWorks, among others.
Nature Dreaming: Rediscovering California's Landscapes borrows its title from lines of a lyric poem by Robinson Jeffers, "The Beauty of Things":
. . . man you might say, is nature dreaming, but rock
And water and sky are constant—to feel
Greatly, and understand greatly, and express greatly, the natural
Beauty, is the sole business of poetry.
(The Wild God of the World: An Anthology of Robinson Jeffers. Ed. Albert Gelpi. Stanford: Stanford U P, 2003. p. 175)
"Hawk Tower, Tor House," built by Jeffers, photographed by Celeste Davison, 2008.
Jeffers understood that humanity is a small part of a divine and astonishingly beautiful whole, a whole that in our individualized, sealed-off, post-industrial, digital landscapes often seems far removed from contemporary experience. To reconnect to the whole—the natural world that surrounds and sustains us—requires, as Jeffers well knew, first reconnecting to the particular, opening our senses to "rock and water and sky," wherever we should be.
Nature Dreaming will explore this idea by focusing on California stories that are grounded in local experience, sensitive to the delicate ecological balance of the planet, suspicious of abstraction, and celebratory of the relationships human beings establish with the natural world, especially through deep experience of their home regions, through the work they do there, through their love of rock, water, and sky.
Production begins this fall. Return here for updates, pictures, audio and video clips, and profiles of featured writers and scholars.
Nature Dreaming is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
Nature Dreaming will explore this idea by focusing on California stories that are grounded in local experience, sensitive to the delicate ecological balance of the planet, suspicious of abstraction, and celebratory of the relationships human beings establish with the natural world, especially through deep experience of their home regions, through the work they do there, through their love of rock, water, and sky.
