BTL 17: The Climate Issue!
Blood Tree Issue 17 is here!
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The Climate Issue features our contest winners Amanda Trout (1st place), Jesse Curan (2nd place), and Leah Scott-Kirby (3rd place). As well as work from Susan Alkaitis, Sophie Amado, siddharth arora, Jasper Beck, Olga Bloemen, Miguel Camnitzer, David Capps, Panika M.C. Dillon, AR Dugan, Caroline Elise, Will Falk, Ashton Freeman, Brandi George, Dylan Harrington, Jeffrey-Michael Kane, Taria Karillion, Hannan Khan, Emily Kingery, J.I. Kleinberg, Rucker Manley, Patrick McEvoy & Randy Valiente, Morven Moeller, Stephanie Mohr, Mykyta Ryzhykh, Rachel Sacks, Sarah Sorensen, and Justis Ward.
Issue 17’s featured artist for The Climate Issue is Bahamian collagist Jessica Whittingham. This issue also featured a new Contributor Book Review of Will Falk’s When I Set the Sweetgrass Down (Wayfarer Books, 2023) by our Reviews Editor Gabriela Adamczyk, “What Is the Sound of Burning?”, as well as an exclusive author interview with Sarah Durrand by our Features Editor Evan C. Loving.
Our planet is in a climate crisis. 2026 is predicted to be one of the hottest on record, with rising global pollution levels and continued capitalized destruction of nature. But we live here. We live everywhere. Every person, animal, plant, and fossil is at risk, especially those in the Global South and fringe ecological niches. It is vital that as many humans as possible do what we can within our means to help protect and restore this beautiful planet we share.
That’s why we’ve matched our Issue 17 monetary awards in donations to both Mossy Earth, who run global rewilding projects such as reefscaping, reforesting, ecological nurseries & restoration, biodiversity conservation, environmental research, and partnership projects including native animal species reintroductions/translocations, endangered animal protection and monitoring, and cave clean-ups; and the Alaskan Wilderness League, who run localized conservation projects for the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and other regional environments crucial to the Gwich’in and Iñupiat peoples, birds from six continents, three species of bears, and several other migratory animal species like caribou & salmon & oxen. Please check them both out to learn more about all the important work they do and how you can support not only their programs, but environmentalist efforts in your community.
Whether invoking the literal climate, the political climate, or the literary climate (looking at you, AI slop), expressing both natural wonders and unnatural disasters through art helps connect us to the world around us. Through fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction, and hybrid writing, the work of our Issue 17 Climate Contest explores Earth in all its growth, grief, and gravity. We asked for your nature writing, emotional ecosystems, environments preserved in ink, your seedling dreams, so that we can bask in the sun, clear the air, meditate on change, and inspire action together.
Thank you so much to everyone who submitted to our Issue 17 Climate Contest. We are humbled to have received a record number of contest submissions, and such wonderful ones at that. It’s solely through submission fees that we are able to award our featured creators, pay our contributors, and donate to such an important cause. And, always, thank you to all of our readers without whom none of this would be possible.
XOXO
Kylie
*Reminder that BTL is best viewed on a laptop or desktop screen in order to preserve the formatting of our contributors’ creative works.