Prize-winning essayist turns to the imagination as a spiritual guide and material method of living through climate disruption, as climate change and broad extinction forever alter our place on the planet and our lives together. Imagination breaks the shell of the status quo, summoning up objects that do not yet exist, actions that no one has yet performed, and wiser ways of living that have yet to be realized. Fascinated by science and math from an early age, Scott Russell Sanders later developed a passion for literature and art. From his college years onward, he has been deeply engaged in struggles against racism, sexism, environmental devastation, and war. Gradually he realized that his response to each of these challenges arose from compassion and a desire to reduce suffering. Woven through his reflections on issues vital to human survival and flourishing, Sanders tells the story of his own intellectual and moral journey from childhood religion to an adult philosophy of life (which is later tested when his son is diagnosed with stage-four cancer). He recounts how he and his wife, who has Parkinson’s disease, leave their beloved old house to accommodate her needs, and turn their handsome new house into a home and their raw city lot into a garden. In The Way of Imagination, Scott Russell Sanders shows that acts of imagination are crucial to healing our divided society and damaged earth.
Author
Scott Russell Sanders is the award-winning author of A Private History of Awe, Hunting for Hope, A Conservationist Manifesto, Dancing in Dreamtime, and two dozen other books of fiction, personal narrative, and essays. His father came from a family of cotton farmers in Mississippi, his mother from an immigrant doctor’s family in Chicago. He spent his early childhood in Tennessee and his school years in Ohio, Rhode Island, and Cambridge, England. In his writing he is concerned with our place in nature, the practice of community, and the search for a spiritual path. He and his wife, Ruth, a biochemist, have reared two children in their hometown of Bloomington, in the hardwood hill country of southern Indiana. You can visit Scott at www.scottrussellsanders.com. In August 2020, Counterpoint Press will publish his new collection of essays, The Way of Imagination, a reflection on healing and renewal in a time of climate disruption. He is currently at work on a collection of short stories inspired by photographs.
