Join us this summer by applying to our in-person workshop! We'd love to see you there.

This poem 🖤

"Who knows how many tales, poems, and songs the Moon has inspired?" Check out Christopher Cokinos' stellar piece in @orionmagazine.bsky.social! 🌙

“Liriodendron, in the magnolia family, is a relic of deep time. These trees have been present for more than 100 million years, predating oaks and maples by tens of millions.” Kerissa Fuccillo Battle visits a favored tree, and notes its pauses—and its persistence—in winters now and throughout time.

It's here! Introducing Orion's Spring issue, WORKING THE LAND: LESSONS IN LABOR AND COLLECTIVE ACTION, en route to your doorsteps right now 💪 How we work, resist, and survive is all connected—and it's all happening in conversation with the environment and the more-than-human world. (1/2)

"Artemis II’s motto is 'For all humanity.' It’s not a mere slogan. It’s a challenge." In April—potentially even tomorrow—NASA will be sending people to the moon for the first time in more than fifty years. Christopher Cokinos breaks down the science and the poetry of it all.

Spring is here, and with it, flowers and their aromas. David George Haskell guides us along our evolutionary connection to flowers and why we love them in our perfumes, diffusers, and gardens. orionmagazine.org/article/an-a...

"There is a certain kind of fierce friendship between young women who pledge themselves to each other absolutely, for which the rest of life is a kind of complicated aftermath." Leslie Jamison on friendship. orionmagazine.org/article/melb...

Denali Sai Nalamalapu's graphic memoir of rural resistance is an open and honest look at what it takes to fight uphill battles—and why they're worth it. Here's a peek. orionmagazine.org/article/holl...

When you stop to smell the roses, have you ever wondered why they smell so good to you? What mechanisms in our biology make us want to get a whiff? David George Haskell breaks down the science of smell in this celebration of springtime delights.

"There is no single way to grieve / the world..." from 'After Szymborska' by Justin Bigos, in Orion's Winter 2025/2026 issue. orionmagazine.org/article/afte...

"How shall we open to the America we find ourselves in, so various and vibrant, so riven? How shall we do more than merely requite its loneliness?" 🥚 orionmagazine.org/article/the-...

We like to break this one out every now and again, just in case someone needs it... orionmagazine.org/article/5-ti...

JOIN US for writing time, community, and dedicated space to finally get your project off the ground. March 31 is the application deadline. Courses: 🌱 In This Poem Something Grows with @asaldrake.bsky.social 🌾 Finding Joy in the Ordinary with Natalya Sukhonos Learn more and apply here!

For @orionmagazine.bsky.social 'Like an orchard in full bloom, nurturing stories requires care and connection, too. The people we love who are no longer alive—Stacey, Janna, Jonathan, Shizuko—are still with us, and our stories about them are seeds planted with gentleness and hope for the future.'

'I think a lot about the limitations of language and how we interpret the language we use every day to talk about the senses,' Alice said in 2022 in a delightful conversation with @edyong209.bsky.social at @orionmagazine.bsky.social

"You’ve been conditioned to walk the line, summit the mountain, follow the path of prescribed progress until you’re too exhausted and too baffled to ever consider thinking or living in a different shape. Know there are different shapes. New routes."

The people love our workshops—so it's a good thing we have two open for application right now. Check the thread down below for more details, or click here to learn more and apply! Deadline is March 31. orionmagazine.org/events-works...

It is with immense gratitude that we bid farewell to Camille T. Dungy as our poetry editor. Her poetic vision has been vital to the pages of Orion over the last five years. Here, she chats with Sean Hill on poetry, community, and being Black in America. Thank you for all you do, Camille. 💚

Maple season is in full swing, people.

"Leaving a garden is like leaving a marriage—it’s an abandonment of the plan." Now *that's* an opening line. Eula Biss on gardening and time.

“Grasping the feeling of dread, of misplaced—or foregone—humanity is a failed hunt for meaning,” wrote Zarina Zabrisky at the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “There is no meaning in war.”

I just discovered the Anatomically Correct Pegasus discussion thanks to this article. Sometimes I still love the internet.

Another beautiful piece by Kerri ní Dochartaigh:

"I grew up there in that garden, finding ways to listen — instead of to the language of petrol bombs and hijackings, kneecappings, and family breakdown — to the language of the color green. I found my own way, away from places of darkness and fear, toward places of glimmering light and hope."

😎😎😎😎

Palestinian past and present converges in—and is preserved in—film. Here, some vignettes.

What does our obsession with reality TV—and specifically, survival reality TV—say about us? Casey Lyons investigates.

A reading list to invite a little wonder back in.

Dolen Perkins-Valdez’s book ‘Happy Land’ is out in the world—and Emily Raboteau sat down to talk to her about it. In this sprawling conversation about the real-life Kingdom of Happy Land, the two writers discuss Black sovereignty, connection to the land, loss, and legacy.

“Yes, you fancy yourself a bird lover, and flickers are gorgeous woodpeckers, and their drumming is a fabulous rite of spring, and we all want to be enlightened about coexisting with wildlife. But good lord, it’s five a.m.! No one will judge you.” 7 gentle ways to use your broom this spring ☺️

Allegra Goodman and Sophie Elmhirst’s books have one crucial theme in common: survival. The two authors sat down to discuss what happens when the line between observation of nature and participation in nature finally disappears.

Roberto Benavidez’s bird series depicts examples of queer nature—same-sex couplings, hybrids, gynandromorphs—all while using a joyous medium: the piñata. orionmagazine.org/article/pape...

"The Irish language is all tied up with the ropes of colonialism; it was kept from me as a child," writes Kerri ní Dochartaigh. "When I decided to learn as an adult, the first words I learned were the ones for the color green. I say words for there are three: uaine, gorm, and glas."

“The last of Ireland’s great oak forests were gone by the end of the seventeenth century,” writes Lenny Antonelli in this story from our 2021 Spring issue. “But pockets of this ancient forest linger.” Today, walk with us through the ghost wood.

We've got the Oscars on the mind 💭 Featured in our film issue a few winters ago, one artist showed us a new way to think about movies—in maps. Andrew DeGraff makes meticulous maps to show the routes of some of our favorite characters in some of Hollywood's most iconic films.

We're remembering Robert Redford this award season. In this interview, published in our film issue last winter, Redford discusses his legendary career, his environmental activism, and film’s capacity to inspire action. orionmagazine.org/article/robe...

Looking at this Pegasus, what do you see? It’s lonely, hard work to be strange, writes Shauna Laurel Jones. In Odilon Redon’s lithograph, the atypical treatment of the oft-heroic horse lets us see him in a new light. From Orion's winter issue, CRYPTIDS. orionmagazine.org/article/impl...

OG Orion contributor Terry Tempest Williams is the award-winning author of 17 books, including the environmental classic, Refuge, and most recently, The Glorians: Visitations from the Holy Ordinary. But can she make any convincing birdcalls? orionmagazine.org/article/terr...

Prepare to be thoroughly entertained by this amazing Q&A with Terry Tempest Williams, author of THE GLORIANS, in @orionmagazine.bsky.social!

A whale in the rainforest, a house trapped in ice: an in-between tale for an in-between season.

Just a couple days left to register! Join Jeff VanderMeer and Leanne Dunic at 2 p.m. ET on March 11 for a conversation all about CRYPTIDS, moderated by McKayla Coyle and presented in partnership with our friends at LitHub. orionmagazine.org/event-worksh...

What's environmental (in)justice? How does it play out as the Earth's climate changes? Meera Subramanian and Danica Novgorodoff's graphic primer lays it all out: orionmagazine.org/article/what...

Come one, come all! @jeffvandermeer.bsky.social and Leanne Dunic will be chatting all things CRYPTIDS at our Winter Issue celebration on March 11! Register for this conversation, moderated by McKayla Coyle and presented with our pals at Literary Hub, here: orionmagazine.org/event-worksh...

THE Terry Tempest Williams answers the Orion Questionnaire.

Author conversation w/ sister @dolenperkinsvaldez.bsky.social in @orionmagazine.bsky.social on Black sovereignty, land ownership and legacy in her fourth novel, HAPPY LAND, out this week from @penguinrandomhouse.bsky.social in paperback.

Strange Beasts: How Art Combats Extinction by Hasanthika Sirisena in @orionmagazine.bsky.social #GraphicMedicine (of a sort) orionmagazine.org/article/stra...

Katherine Cusumano finally gets close to the Gowanus Canal and its many myths for our Winter issue, CRYPTIDS. orionmagazine.org/article/trou...

Award-winning and best-selling author Lauren Groff gives us a peek into her life—and her baffling list of favorite words—in the latest Orion Questionnaire.

Woohoo! @orionmagazine.bsky.social is a finalist for the #ASME awards! Best single-topic issue, about queer ecology!