Note: Our complete Press Kit with logos, book covers, and other information is available in a google folder. To access please email: annondras@gmail.com with your name, the email you’ll use to access the folder, and your affiliation. Thank you.
Overview of NatureCulture LLC, Writing the Land, and Authors & Artists Festival: Our interwoven stories
NatureCulture LLC is the parent company that directs Writing the Land project, manages the Authors and Artists Festival, produces other events, and that starting in 2022 will be publishing the anthologies it currently edits. Lis McLoughlin, PhD is the founder and only member of NatureCulture LLC which was officially incorporated in 2021 as an umbrella for her underpaid and volunteer activities which include writing, producing events, researching, and editing.
The Authors & Artists Festival is directed by an ad-hoc grassroots board. Lis McLoughlin is a founding member of the board and manages and produces the festival and associated events. Other board members include Dickinson Memorial Library programming librarian Matt Atwood, and Northfield Historical Commission member Mary King. The festival began in 2020, and 2022 was its third year. It reaches over 800 audience members globally both live-online and through recordings of the presentations. In 2022 all headline speakers were Black, Indigenous, People of Color (BIPOC) and the theme of Writing the Land included both poets from the Writing the Land project, and headline speakers on the intersection of social and environmental justice.
The Writing the Land project was conceived of, founded by, and is directed by Lis McLoughlin. Senior advisors to the project include poet David Crews who helped develop the first year’s network of land trusts, and who implemented the website, editing and posting poems as they were produced. Current senior project advisors include poet Rachelle Parker., with Technical Advisor Elizabeth Burton-Crow. The project pairs poets with protected lands and produces anthologies sold by the land protection agencies (and the poets if they wish) to support their mission. The project began in 2020 with 1 New-England-based anthology containing 11 land trusts and 40 poets. In 2022 we will have 4 anthologies with over 40 land trusts, and we work with over 200 poets nationwide. Recruitment of poets and land protection organizations is ongoing on a rolling basis.