About EarthLines Magazine
In 2012 Two Ravens Press will begin publishing EarthLines, a full-colour A4-sized quarterly magazine of around 64 pages, dedicated to high quality writing on nature, place and the environment. Our focus is on writing which explores the relationship between people and the natural world, and encourages reconnection. We want to help forge a new ecoliterature that is truly responsive to, and that deeply and meaningfully engages with, the challenges we face. That doesn't just acknowledge, but that actively embraces all the contradictions and discomforts inherent in our relationship with the natural world – those contradictions which surface in all of our genuine attempts to reconnect.
Uniquely, EarthLines includes work by writers, storytellers, artists, scientists, and others who live close to or work with the natural world – we aim to be as inclusive as possible. We strongly believe that the future of ecoliterature is interdisciplinary: that inspiration for the kind of transformative work we're looking for will derive in good part from exposure to the ideas of philosophers, psychologists, ecologists, anthropologists, storytellers, mythographers, visual artists ... and a wide range of other fields of endeavour.
We believe that many of the problems that we and the planet face today spring from a disconnection between humans and the rest of the natural world. We believe that positive change can't be accomplished until we have begun to re-establish that connection. Although we're not intending EarthLines to be a magazine that focuses on environmental activism, we also believe strongly that art of all kinds can play a major role in raising awareness about the natural world and the necessity of our connection to it.
Ultimately, our emphasis is on writing of the highest quality by both new and well-known writers, and our aim is to make each illustrated issue a thing of beauty.
For all of these reasons, we hope that EarthLines will be more than a magazine. Our aspiration is to become a major positive force in inspiring and nurturing a closer connection between people and the natural world. We aim to do this not only by means of publishing the print magazine, but by building up a network of individuals who are committed to the project and the issues we focus on, using our website, blog, and all the other communications tools we have available to us. We want to encourage the conversations that lead to change. If you have ideas about how we might develop the project or the magazine, or can help us spread the word, please get in touch.
One of our current projects is to set up a major resource for reviews and information on ecoliterature. For more information, see the Ecoliterature book reviews and resources page.
EarthLines is also unique in that it is a magazine and a project that springs from a way of life that is rooted in the natural world and in the wild: it is published by independent publisher Two Ravens Press, from a working croft on the remote far western coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides.
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The magazine's editor is Sharon Blackie. All design, typesetting and production work is carried out by Sharon and her husband, David Knowles. (For more information about the EarthLines team, see the right sidebar.) EarthLines will be printed in the UK using only papers from FSC/PEFC suppliers; we use FSC/PEFC or recycled paper for our office supplies and stationery wherever possible.
EarthLines is not a funded project; we are entirely reliant on sales, a very small amount of relevant advertising, and donations to cover our costs. At present, we produce the magazine for love, as a voluntary, unpaid activity, and in the beginning stages of the magazine's life we are unable to offer payments to contributors, except for occasional lead articles (see our submissions page). If we can build up a small amount of revenue from advertising and donations, we hope that this situation will change very soon. (Although we have published around 60 books in the five years of Two Ravens Press' existence, and have not paid ourselves at all for this work, we are proud to have paid many thousand pounds worth of royalties to our authors.)
We do not plan to distribute EarthLines through newsstands. Among our many reasons for this, the key reason is waste. Around 50% of all magazines that are printed and distributed to newsagents in the UK remain unsold and are pulped. We believe this is a significant waste of natural resources – especially of trees. It certainly doesn't match the EarthLines ethic. We are more than happy to supply magazines to individual bookshops and other relevant outlets (please see our Trade page for details) but we envisage that the majority of our sales will take place through subscriptions or through individual sales on this website.
EarthLines editorial policy
Our major aim in publishing EarthLines is to satisfy the growing thirst for high quality ecoliterature, and to contribute to the development of the genre in all the ways described above.
EarthLines is neither a literary journal nor a commercial advertising-laden newsstand magazine; it is in shifting sands somewhere between the two. Although we are happy to publish academic essays, we are not an academic journal, and such essays will need to be relevant to the intelligent general reader, not just to specialists.
We welcome submissions from a wide range of contributors – not just professional writers. We believe that the clarity of our focus on writing that explores the relationship between people and the natural world and that encourages reconnection makes EarthLines unique; so does the inclusion of work by storytellers, artists, scientists, and others who live or work in ways that bring them close to the natural world.
We recognise that for many people, their connection with the natural world is something that they conceive of, at least in part, as a spiritual connection. We equally recognise that there are many people who are deeply connected to the natural world for whom even the word ‘spiritual’ is anathema. In recognition of these diverging perspectives, and to ensure that we keep our very clear focus on writing about nature, place and the environment, EarthLines will not contain articles that focus specifically on either spirituality or self-help and ‘wellbeing’; there are plenty of other magazines that do so (including, for example, Resurgence). We do, however, intend to respect the beliefs of all contributors to EarthLines and if an article should contain passing reference to such beliefs and practices then we believe that’s entirely appropriate. We’re striving for inclusivity, and hope that both readers and contributors will approach the magazine in that spirit.
About us
Two Ravens Press is an independent publisher of contemporary British and international literature which was founded in November 2006 by two writers, Sharon Blackie and David Knowles. We have recently refocused our list to specialise in challenging and innovative ecoliterature: fiction, poetry, and nonfiction.
We operated originally from a working lochside croft near Ullapool in the north-west Highlands of Scotland. In May 2010 we relocated to another croft by the sea, in the wild and beautiful region of Uig, just where the road runs out by the border with Harris on the far west coast of the Isle of Lewis in the Outer Hebrides. We keep two small flocks of registered rare-breed sheep (Hebrideans and Jacobs), a couple of breeding sows, Roman geese, Cayuga ducks, a miscellany of hens, and a Kerry milk cow. And with our raised beds and Keder polytunnel, we plan to become self-sufficient in vegetable production. We love good books and good literature; we love good film and art, but we're not much into popular culture. We don't have a TV, don't know one end of a celebrity from another, and don't do much in the way of 'networking'. But we do know what it is to regularly walk out of the house with a bivvy bag to a rock bed by the ocean, or to walk beyond the road's end into the mountains and lochs beyond. We know eagle and otter as well as sheep, pig and cow. And because we are writers as well as publishers, we know good writing when we see it. That and a deep love and respect for the natural world is what we hope to bring you in EarthLines magazine.
(For more information about Two Ravens Press, take a look at our website, at www.tworavenspress.com. Browse and buy our discounted books (P&P free in the UK) and read our book and author pages with extracts, interviews, photographs and biographical information.)
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You can read an article about us, about Two Ravens Press, the reasons for our recent changes in focus and the new magazine over at the Transition Network blog: http://www.transitionnetwork.org/stories/guest-editor/2011-11/transitioning-ethical-eco-publishing-and-birth-new-magazine