Woodsqueer

A literary journal of queer ecologies

Before artists such as Susan Fenimoore Cooper, traditional, transcendental men such as Henry David Thoreau controlled the narrative of nature. However, the queerness of nature has always been home to those who didn’t fit into the lines of binary and society. This journal’s objective is to bring these voices back into the limelight.

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nature, texture, iceland, moody, photography, otherworldly iceland, underground, underworld, otherwordly, woodland,

Susan Fenimore Cooper was renowned for her book Rural Hours, published four years before Thoreau’s Walden and mentioned several times in the notes. However, due to her womanhood in a male-dominated field and anonymous publication, her brilliant work was overshadowed by her father’s novels and similar works of men at the time.

She was one of the first nature writers to raise awareness of the dangers of overexploiting the environment and its natural resources. Her work was essential to the nature writing community, as it put transcendental style aside to focus on natural elements and science.

Susan Fenimoore Cooper

Emily Dickinson

Emily Dickinson followed in Fenimore's footsteps and took a less traditional approach to writing. Her famous poems on death, life, and nature contained forms new to the time. She became well-known for writing in the first person and using the em dash to articulate feelings and thoughts felt but not yet able to be articulated and liberation of mind and boy that was not yet possible.

Ocean Vuong

Vuong is this generation of writers' poetic explorer. He picks up where Dickinson left off, using form to express a new kind of language. He uses negative space to communicate. When interviewed, Vuong describes this space as stuttering, pausing, and jumping around, just like speaking.