Books by Jill Sisson Quinn

Finalist for the 2022 ASLE Book Award in Creative WritingSign Here If You Exist explores states of being and states of mind, from the existence of God to sense of place to adoptive motherhood. In it, Jill Sisson Quinn examines how these states both disorient and anchor us as she treks through forests, along shorelines and into lakes and rivers as well as through memories and into scientific literature.Each essay hinges on an unlikely pairing-parasitic wasps and the afterlife, or salamanders and parenthood-in which each element casts the other in unexpectedly rich light. Quinn joins the tradition of writers such as Annie Dillard, Scott Russell Sanders, and Eula Biss to deliver essays that radiate from the junction of science and imagination, observation and introspection, and research and reflection.

Deranged links ecological explorations with moments of individual maturation in nineteen essays that braid natural history and memoir. On one level, Deranged investigates salient environmental topics such as Colony Collapse Disorder, forest fragmentation, the near-extinction of Britain's Large Blue Butterfly, altruism, the evolution of walking in early humans, and the threat of another mass extinction. But interwoven is a woman's coming-of-age, an exploration of the process of accepting childlessness while at the same time developing a sense of place in the Midwest. Deranged explores the mutability of where we believe we belong, and who we believe we are.