Joanne Poyourow

One of the first books I remember loving was Charlotte's Web by E.B. White. My forever take-away was that there are many things going on around us that people just walk by without noticing; they're not aware of what's going on. That thread continues in my work today.

A high-school favorite was Frank Herbert's Dune. Right now in the worst California drought in recorded history, it's like Dune is somehow coming to life. Herbert's characters had "moisture consciousness" and I feel like I have that too, and we're all going to acquire it in coming years as climate change accelerates.

One of my favorite gardening books today is Wendy Johnson's Gardening at the Dragon's Gate. It drifts between hard-core gardening advice and spiritual observations, they become one-and-the-same, as they should be.

The common thread in these is: things aren't necessarily as they appear to be, and if you're sensitive to it, and you really listen, the natural world will tell you a story. Now go read my books about the economy, and you'll find the same theme!

I read a lot of young adult fiction for entertainment. There's some really great content out there, and a lot of it is forward-thinking. A lot of today's young adult fiction doesn't idolize technology; it questions it, and there are many different ways it shows the down sides of technology being everywhere in human life. I've read a lot of stories that show how technology and "scientific advances" are making us less-human, how they're eating away at the edges, in some way or another.

In my real-life work, we try to reclaim that human-ness. "Building community" might need internet and email to schedule a gathering, but the event itself is about people talking face-to-face and getting to know one another. I'm not a luddite; I've got the smartphone, and I'm on lots of social media, but there's a whole lot more living to be done than inside that little light-box. And when it comes to environmental solutions, and putting solutions in place in the real world, we have to step back from the technology and do real-world things.

Lots of the young adult stories I'm reading are about action: can do, let's go do it, young people out there doing stuff in the world. There isn't much "story" if you were to write about a kid sitting in a dark room playing video games. Similarly, there isn't much "life" if you were to try to do everything from your armchair. You've got to go out and get dirty, put your fingers into the garden soil.