Queer Ecologies Book Club Reads: Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love

THIS BOOK CLUB HAS BEEN EXTENDED AND WILL GO THROUGH OCTOBER 2026. Check back in the fall to see if it will continue in 2027!

This group will meet regularly in-person at Charis on the first Thursday of each month at 7pm.

About the book club:
Queer Ecologies is an emerging field that illuminates queerness in the natural world. Through a mix of non-fiction, speculative fiction, and poetry, the Queer Ecologies Book Club introduces readers to the queer, non-binary, and downright bizarre beings found all over planet Earth. Simultaneously, we consider what it means to live queerly on and practice care for this rapidly transforming planet we call home. The Queer Ecologies Book Club centers queer, trans, and gender expansive people, ideas, experiences, and ways of being, but is open to all community members. Participants are encouraged to read the month’s book before our gatherings. However, doing so is not required – come as you are, regardless of how much you’ve read! Participants are expected to treat each other with respect in all group conversations and interactions. This book club is facilitated by Charis bookseller & queer ecologist, Yarrow Koning.

About our July book:

Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love by Lida Maxwell

After the success of her first bestseller, The Sea Around Us, Rachel Carson settled in Southport, Maine. The married couple Dorothy and Stanley Freeman had a cottage nearby, and the trio quickly became friends. Their extensive and evocative correspondence shows that Dorothy and Rachel did something more: they fell in love.

In this moving new book, Lida Maxwell explores their letters to reveal how Carson’s masterpiece, Silent Spring, grew from the love these women shared for their wild surroundings and, vitally and increasingly, for each other. Carson had already demonstrated a profound environmental awareness by the time she purchased her home in Maine; Maxwell proposes that it took her love for Dorothy to open up a more powerful space for critique. As their love unsettled their heteronormative ideas of bourgeois life, it enabled Carson to develop an increasingly critical view of capitalism and its effects on nonhuman nature and human lives alike, and it was this evolution that made the advocacy of Silent Spring possible.

In Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love, Silent Spring’s expos of the dangerous and loveless exhaustion of nature for capitalism’s ends is set in bold relief against the lovers’ correspondence, in which we see the path toward a more loving use of nature and a transformative political desire that, Maxwell argues, should inform our approach to contemporary environmental crises.

2026 Books:

January: Queer Ducks (and Other Animals): The Natural World of Animal Sexuality by Eliot Schrefer
February: Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival by Maria Pinto
March: Forest Euphoria: The Abounding Queerness of Nature by Patricia Ononiwu Kaishian
April: Unfurl: Survivals, Sorrows, and Dreaming by Eli Clare
May: What A Fish Looks Like by Syr Hayati Beker
June: Love After the End: An Anthology of Two-Spirit and Indigiqueer Speculative Fiction edited by Joshua Whitehead
July: Rachel Carson and the Power of Queer Love by Lida Maxwell
August: Salt Lakes: An Unnatural History by Caroline Tracey
September: Scapegoat: What the Invasive Species Story Gets Wrong by Clare Follmann
October: The Disordered Cosmos: A Journey into Dark Matter, Spacetime, and Dreams Deferred by Chanda Prescod-Weinstein

In-person event guidelines:
– All attendees must wear a face mask.
– We will begin seating people at 6:45 PM ET.
– As a reminder: If you are not feeling well, please do not come to the event.
– If you have any questions regarding these guidelines or to request specific accessibility accommodations, please contact info@charisbooksandmore.com or call the store at 404-524-0304

The event is free and open to all people, but we encourage and appreciate a donation of $5-20 in support of the work of Charis Circle, our programming non-profit. Donate online at www.chariscircle.org/donate or in person at the event.

By attending our event you agree to our Code of Conduct: Our event seeks to provide a harassment-free experience for everyone, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to info@chariscircle.org immediately.ability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), class, or technology choices. We do not tolerate harassment in any form. Unsolicited sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. Anyone violating these rules will be expelled from this event and all future events at the discretion of the organizers. Please report all harassment to info@chariscircle.org immediately.