Heather Sellers, a professor in the Department of English at the University of South Florida recently published two new books of poetry―Field Notes from the Flood Zone (two editions)―which addresses issues of climate change and the environment.
Born and raised in Florida, Heather Sellers grew up in an extraordinarily difficult home. The natural world provided a life-giving respite from domestic violence. She found, in the tropical flora and fauna, great beauty and meaningful connection. She made her way by trying to learn the name of every flower, every insect, every fish and shell and tree she encountered.
That world no longer exists.
In this collection of poems, Sellers laments its loss, while observing, over the course of a year, daily life of the people and other animals around her, on her street, and in her low-lying coastal town, where new high rises soar into the sky as the storm clouds gather with increasing intensity and the future of the community―and seemingly life as we know it―becomes more and more uncertain.
Sprung from her daily observation journals, haunted by ghosts from the past, Field Notes from the Flood Zone is a double love letter: to a beautiful and fragile landscape, and to the vulnerable young girl who grew up in that world. It is an elegy for the two great shaping forces in a life, heartbreaking family struggle and a collective lost treasure, our stunning, singular, desecrated Florida, and all its remnant beauty.
can be purchased directly from the publisher, BOA Editions LTD.
Sellers is the author of four poetry collections: Field Notes from the Flood Zone (BOA, 2022); The Present State of the Garden (Lynx House Press, 2021); The Boys I Borrow (New Issues Press, 2007), which was a finalist for the James Laughlin Award; and Drinking Girls and Their Dresses (Ahsahta Press, 2002). She is also the author of the memoir You Don’t Look Like Anyone I Know (Riverhead, 2011), which was an O, the Oprah Magazine Book of the Month Club Choice and an Editor’s Choice at the New York Times, and the craft book The Practice of Creative Writing (Macmillan St. Martins Bedford, 2021), now in its fourth edition.