In this episode of the Terrain.org Podcast, our nonfiction editors Elizabeth Dodd, Achilles Seastrom, Jennie Case, and Eric Aldrich discuss how they became editors, the submissions they long to discover, and which types of essays are and aren’t a good fit for the journal. They also describe how editing has affected their own writing and reveal where else they look for impressive new environmental literature. Elizabeth Dodd was born in Boulder, Colorado, and grew up in Athens, Ohio. For over two decades she has lived in eastern Kansas in the Flint Hills region, where she is an award-winning professor of creative writing and literature at Kansas State University. She has team-taught courses with scientists, philosophers, and historians and she has led students on field trips in conjunction with their readings in environmental literature. Elizabeth is a poet and nonfiction writer. Her newest book, Horizon’s Lens: My Time on the Turning World, was published by the University of Nebraska Press in 2012. Achilles Fergus Seastrom (he/him) is a trans writer, editor, and artist from the Midwest. He’s a 2023-2024 Hogrefe Fellow at Iowa State University, where he’s currently pursuing his MFA. He also works as a freelance journalist and reads fiction for the science fiction magazine James Gunn’s Ad Astra. Jennie Case's writing explores issues related to place, environment, home, family, and motherhood. Her work has appeared in journals such as Orion, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review. She is the recipient of a Bread Loaf Bakeless Scholarship and Stone Canoe‘s 2014 Allen and Nirelle Galson Prize in Fiction. She is the author of three books: the essay collection We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood; a memoir, Sawbill: A Search for Place; and the hybrid work, The Carework Project: Reckoning with Love, Labor, and the Living World. She is also editing a collection on trauma-informed pedagogy. Eric Aldrich is a writer from Tucson, Arizona. You can find his work in DIAGRAM, BorderLore, and Deep Wild, among others. He teaches English at Pima Community College and serves on the board of directors for Sky Island Alliance, an environmental conservation organization. His YouTube channel, Lo Fi Outdoors, features trail camera footage of desert animals.
