The Terrain.org Podcast
Tamara Dean hosts the relaunch of the Terrain.org Podcast with an episode titled “The Gift of Animals,” after the new poetry anthology edited by Alison Hawthorne Deming and published by Storey Publishing: The Gift of Animals: Poems of Love, Loss, and Connection:
In this episode, Tamara speaks with The Gift of Animals editor and contributors Nickole Brown, Jose Hernandez Diaz, and Camille T. Dungy, asking why the anthology is necessary now, what it means to the contributors to be a part of this anthology both for the poets and for the poems, how grief and love play into our responsibilities to the animal world, and why both animals and poetry are a gift to those connected to the animal world.
About Tamara Dean
Tamara Dean is the podcast editor of Terrain.org and author of Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), a collection of 12 true tales of discovery that invite readers to experience nature mindfully in a time of uncertainty. Tamara’s short stories and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, the Guardian, One Story, Orion, The Southern Review, STORY Magazine, and other publications. She is also the author of a book on sustainable living, The Human-Powered Home, and bestselling college textbooks on computer networking. Tamara has earned an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been awarded fellowships at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Mesa Refuge, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and elsewhere. She teaches writing workshops independently and through writing centers such as Hugo House, The Loft, and Writers.com.
Music: “Liftoff,” by Nature Connection.
Illustration by Daniela Gallego excerpted from The Gift of Animals, © by Alison Hawthorne Deming. Used with permission from Storey Publishing.
