Incongruities

Branching out 021

Huge thanks to those of you who have become paid subscribers to Twig & Ink! I sincerely appreciate your support. As a reminder, I do not intend to create paywalls, but if you would like to support my work financially, you now have the opportunity to do so. Your support will also help me reach my goal of providing a small honorarium to the people who take the time to share their stories in my monthly interviews. Thank you!

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Save the date(s)! I will be kicking off the Creature Conserve Mentorship Showcase (online) on Friday, March 27th, at 6pm ET. The entire showcase is free and open to the public! Here’s the link to register, full schedule below.

My presentation, The Nature of Collaborative Vision, explores questions including how does collaboration begin? What challenges arise? How do play, reciprocity, and openness allow space for artists and scientists to cross disciplines and create new wildlife conservation pathways? I’ll use examples from my recent projects, including Mentorship CoLab, which convened a small group of artists and scientists to explore biological mutualisms as a model for collaboration-based conservation; a personal project that intertwines the Broad-wing hawk life cycle with the creative process; and a collaboration with land stewards at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary to create an ecological-restoration themed stop-motion animation.

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I appreciated this recent post from poet Aimee Nezhukumatathil—both the prompt itself, and her introduction to it:

For each full moon this year, I’m offering up a loose writing prompt to use in journals or whatever you are making these days. For March, we’ll look at the worm moon. TONIGHT! May all our classrooms and wild places be sanctuaries of care amid so much harm. 🌱

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More recent moments and incongruities:

Nearby wetland, three weeks ago.

Sun melt, shadow ice. Blackwater Wildlife Refuge.

I was confused by the large birds in our sycamore tree after a heavy snow. Turkeys, with a dusting of snow on their backs! I’ve only seen one or two turkeys in a tree once or twice. This was so many!

NYC.

Detail from a room-sized installation piece by Pakistani-American artist Anila Quayyum Agha, part of the Interwoven exhibit at Michner Art Museum. Thank you to poet and Twig & Ink guest Tabassam Shah for the outing!

Crows in winter. And what is happening in the grey-ish strip of field in the center? Eek!

Do you see the tiny horse? This piece of paper from my “weird-paper-tied-to-trees” project has gone completely feral.

Cerulean restoration area, Hawk Mountain Sanctuary.

Packera plattensis (prairie groundsel), just greening up.

Budburst, pussywillow. Grown from a cutting of my grandmother’s plant. I appreciate its tenacity, and its softness. Also, early pollinators LOVE it.

Self portrait with wetland.

Coming soon:

• The next issue of Twig & Ink will feature Juliana Ramirez. You can learn more about Juliana and her work on Instagram, and her website. I can’t wait to share her interview!

• I’m thrilled to announce that I have a new publication coming out in the upcoming Bestiary-themed issue of Dark Mountain! I’ll be in excellent company, too: my daughter Marina (who you can read more about here and here) will have a piece in the same issue.

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Creature Conserve Mentorship Showcase: Full Presentation Schedule

Friday, March 27, 2026
Opening Presentations, 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM ET
Lisa Kahn Schnell, Diana Renn, Ana Sofía Camarga, Derek Russell

Saturday, March 28, 2026
Mentee Panel (3) Presentations and Q&A, 8:00 AM ET - 2:00 PM ET

Panel 1: Bridging Ecologies Through Connections, ET 8:00 AM - 9:45 AM ET
Soundarya Gottapu, Emi Koch, Audacia Ray, Luna Tescari

Panel 2: Interpreting Nature, Creating Voices, 10:00 AM - 11:45 AM ET
Akshita Totlani, Layla Osman, Manya Singh and Aditi Patil, Marie Preston

Panel 3: Managing Conservation, 12:00 PM - 1:30 PM ET
Megan Elevado, Merrica Fernando, Valentina Caceres