Sharman Apt Russell again blends her lush voice and keen scientific eye in this marvelous book about butterflies. From Hindu mythology to Aztec sacrifices, butterflies have served as a metaphor for resurrection and transformation. Even during World War II, children in a Polish death camp scratched hundreds of butterflies onto the walls of their barracks. But as Russell points out in this rich and lyrical meditation, butterflies are above all objects of obsession. From the beastly horned caterpillar, whose blood helps it count time, to the peacock butterfly, with wings that hiss like a snake, Russell traces the butterflies through their life cycles, exploring the creatures' own obsessions with eating, mating, and migrating. In this way, she reveals the logic behind our endless fascination with butterflies as well as the driving passion of such legendary collectors as the tragic Eleanor Glanville, whose children declared her mad because of her compulsive butterfly collecting, and the brilliant Henry Walter Bates, whose collections from the Amazon in 1858 helped develop his theory of mimicry in nature. Russell also takes us inside some of the world's most prestigious natural history museums, where scientists painstakingly catalogue and categorize new species of Lepidoptera, hoping to shed light on insect genetics and evolution. A luminous journey through an exotic world of obsession and strange beauty, this is a book to be treasured by anyone who's ever watched a butterfly mid-flight and thought, as Russell has, "I've entered another dimension."
I am pleased to be considered in the book world as a nature/science writer. At the same time, I have relied on Joseph Campbell's advice to follow my bliss. I write about what engages me, what I can learn from, what seems important. My topics include living in place, public lands grazing, archaeology, flowers, butterflies, hunger, and pantheism. One of the writing workshops I teach is called "A Fearless Heart: Research-Based Prose." Like the country/rock singer Steve Earle, in the lyrics of his song, I aspire as a writer to have a fearless heart, one that "falls in love a lot..."
I have lived in the American Southwest for most of my life, born at Edwards Air Force Base in the Mojave Desert in 1954, raised in apartment buildings in Phoenix, Arizona, and settling in southern New Mexico in 1981. My collections of essays Songs of the Fluteplayer: Seasons of Life in the Southwest (Addison-Wesley, 1991; reprinted by University of Nebraska Press, 2000) recounts my years as a back-to-the-lander in rural New Mexico where my husband and I had an oppressively large garden, too many goats, too much goat cheese, and two home births. My son and daughter are now in their early twenties, and my husband works as the city planner for the town of Silver City. I am a professor in the Humanities Department at Western New Mexico University in Silver City, where I teach writing at all levels, from composition for freshman to creative writing for graduate students. I also serve as part-time faculty in creative nonfiction for the low-residency MFA program at Antioch University in Los Angeles. I enjoyed getting my own MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Montana and my B.S. in Conservation and Natural Resources from the University of California at Berkeley.
My essays and short stories have been widely published and anthologized. My most recent book Standing in the Light: My Life as a Pantheist was a New Mexico Book Award finalist and one of Booklists' top ten religious books of 2008. Hunger: An Unnatural History (Basic Books, 2005) was the result of a Rockefeller Fellowship at Bellagio, Italy, and An Obsession with Butterflies: Our Long Love Affair with a Singular Insect (Perseus Books, 2003) was a pick of independent booksellers in their Summer 2003 Book Sense 76. Anatomy of a Rose: Exploring the Secret Life of Flowers has been translated into Korean, Chinese, Swedish, German, Spanish, and Portuguese--with other books also translated into Russian and Italian. The essays Songs of the Fluteplayer won the 1992 Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award and New Mexico Zia Award. Other awards are a Pushcart Prize, the Henry Joseph Jackson Award, and the Writers at Work Award. I write fiction as well as nonfiction. The Last Matriarch (University of New Mexico Press, 2000) is a novel about Paleolithic life in New Mexico some 11,000 years ago. The Humpbacked Fluteplayer (Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1994) is a fantasy for ages 8-12. I have twice served as the PEN West judge for their annual award in best children's literature.
My teaching philosophy is simple: my goal is to increase a student's authority as a writer. I am here to encourage and support that authority. I can help students better revise their work. I can teach students how to talk about writing with other writers. I can help them feel more centered in who they are as writers and why they write. I can serve as an editor and mentor. I can model a writer's life. As well as teaching at WNMU and Antioch, for the last fifteen years I have been a visiting writer at universities and colleges across the country. I currently teach all online classes at my own university and am free to travel.
For me, writing is also about being active in the world of politics and social change. I have served eight years as an elected member of my local school board, and I founded the school-based food pantry program Alimento para el Nino, which sends home nutritious snacks over the weekend to over 200 hungry children in Grant County. I now work with environmental organizations such as the Upper Gila Watershed Association and the Mayor's Advisory Committee on Climate Protection, and with my local Quaker Meeting on issues of peace and social concern.
