Writing from Your Environment

By Tamara Dean

During interviews about my new essay collection, Shelter and Storm, I’ve been asked what surprised me about living in rural Wisconsin. One surprise was how strange and fascinating nature is up-close, day-to-day. I saw the most extraordinary things—raccoons swinging like monkeys through the treetops, a snake in a square knot on a path in the woods. Another surprise was how volatile weather dictated our activities, and how storms dismantled, in an instant, the structures we’d ...