For Governor Scott, Senator Sanders, Senator Leahy, and Representative Welch

Please fight hard.

As we were gathering and arranging voices for this issue, our federal government’s executive branch excised any mention of climate change from the White House website and effectively  gagged government scientists and National Park Service staff from communicating with the public. Dangerous and destabilizing as they are, executive orders have no currency in the face of a writer’s directive to articulate climate change. The Hopper will proudly publish the voices of those who study and connect with nonhuman nature as long as we are still making issues.

What began last year as a small literary magazine out of our rusty Vermont town has now grown to include voices across America and beyond. We are proud to share the work of international writers and artists such as Susan Richardson, a Welsh poet who imagines the need to refashion creatures for the Anthropocene, and Greek sculptor Aris Katsilakas, who builds new bio-forms as he explores the connections between human evolution and the environment. Issue Two also brings you veteran Hopper contributors Brian Cohen, Alyssa Irizarry, Stephen Siperstein, and Don Thompson. And we are lucky enough to publish well-loved poets like Ted Kooser alongside young writers like Noah Davis and Eliza McGowen.

The work of these writers and artists is timely, especially as JoeAnn Hart reminds us of recent dark history as a caution against the atrocities that humans are capable of and Ben Goldfarb envisions catastrophic species extinction in his speculative (but not so far-off) fiction. But as easy as it is to despair, stories in this collection also remind us what we are fighting for. Tyra Olstad shows us an unparalleled love of land. Michael Smith describes one man’s communion with nature in the face of a threatening diagnosis. And Stephen Siperstein and his wife bring a son into a world where the sound of the ocean meeting the shore still shushes along in time to our heartbeats.

As we fight for safe and sacred water in Flint and Standing Rock, for freedom of migration, for science and our scientists, for public funding for the arts and humanities, for climate change action, and for the right to resist, please continue to share your stories.