Bio and CV

Holden Turner writes about making livable futures in the age of sea-level rise. With an eye to coastal sites in the Eastern US and Italy, he draws on narrative, ethnography, and ecological design thinking to collaborate in the creation of more joyful tomorrows. From 2022 to 2024 he learned from, researched, and taught about the Venetian lagoon while completing a masters degree in Environmental Humanities at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. He has worked with Wetlands books, the Maine Grain Alliance, and the Somali Bantu Community Association at Liberation Farms. His PhD research at Johns Hopkins University focuses on Anthropocene narratives from the Italian peninsula. He calls New England home and loves baking and biking.

Access his CV here: Holden Turner Curriculum Vitae


Dredged oyster bar, Venetian lagoon, 2024

Performing with the Bronse Coverte Theater Collective.
Pandora Climate Laboratory, Venice-Mestre, May 2024.

Terschelling, Netherlands, 2025.

Pavilion Raising at Liberation Farms. Photo by Kelsey Kobik.
Wales, Maine, 2022.


Reading list:
2024

  • Johnson, What if we get it right? (2024)
  • Serra, Bruceremo (2024).
  • Zanardi, La Bonifica Umana (2021).
  • Macola, Gli Indesiderati (2019).
  • Graeber, Hostile Intelligence (2015).
  • Eco, Il Nome della Rosa (1980).
  • Calvino, Il Sentiero dei Nidi di Ragno (1947).
  • Riso Amaro (1947).
  • Mimi Metallurgico Ferito nel suo Onore (1972).
  • Timeto, Animali Si Diventa (2024).
  • Smith, On Beauty (2005).
  • Rothfuss, The Slow Regard of Silent Things (2014).
  • Raff, Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas (2022).
  • Worster, Dust Bowl (1979).
  • Jemisin, The World We Make (2022).
  • Le Guin, The Wave of the Mind (2015).
  • Okorafor, Remote Control (2020).
  • Lahiri, The Namesake (2003).
  • Lahiri, Unaccustomed Earth (2008).
  • Wessels, Reading the Forested Landscape (2005).
  • Feynman, QED (1988).
  • Preciado, Countersexual Manifesto (2002).
  • Bakewell, How to Live, or a Life of Montaigne (2010).
  • Grossman, The Magicians (2007).
  • Alderman, The Power (2016).
  • Codato, Peregrinazioni Lagunari (2024).
  • Jahren, Lab Girl (2016).
  • Davis, Il Giocattolo del Mondo (2022).
  • Le Guin, Hainish Stories (1960-1990)
  • Le Guin, The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).
  • Luisetti, Essere Pietra (2023).
  • Serge, Molecole (2020).
  • Pelligrini, Lagunaria (2023).

2023

  • Bayrak and Göktas, Ghost Stories: The Carrier Bag Theory of Architecture (2023).
  • McCullough, Because Internet (2019).
  • Dabitch and Macola, Lagune (2023).
  • Mencini, Fuoco e Acqua (1996).
  • Buck, After Geoengineering (2019).
  • Archipelago delle Maree (2023).
  • Morgenstern, The Night Circus (2011)
  • Morgenstern, The Starless Sea (2019).
  • Yussof, A Billion Black Anthropocenes or None (2021).
  • Calvino, Six Memos for the New Millennium (1983).
  • Robinson, The Ministry for the Future (2020).
  • Robinson, New York 2140 (2018).
  • Delillo, White Noise (1985).
  • Povinelli, Between Gaia and Ground (2021).
  • Morton, The Ecological Thought (2010).
  • Ardissino and Cuozzo, Dal Paradiso di Dante all'inferno ecologico (2021).
  • Plumwood, Feminism and the mastery of nature (1993).
  • Bauman, Religion and Ecology (2014).
  • Cole, Education, the Anthropocene, and Deleuze/Guattari (2022).
  • Kinsella, Divine Comedy (2008).
  • Butler, The Force of Nonviolence (2020).
  • Mann, La Morte a Venezia (1914).
  • Magnason, On Time and Water (2020).
  • Morton, Humankind (2017).
  • Dante, Paradiso (c.1321).
  • Haraway, The companion species manifesto (2003).
  • Boon et al, Nothing: Three Inquiries into Buddhism (2015).
  • Cohen, Stone: An ecology of the inhuman (2015).
  • Povinelli, Geontology: A requiem for late liberalism (2015).
  • Besteman, Unravelling Somalia (1999).

2022

  • Armiero, Wasteocene (2021).
  • Pievani and Varotto, Viaggio nell'Italia del Anthropocene (2021). 
  • Hickel, Less is More (2020).
  • Haraway, Staying With the Trouble (2016).
  • Mitchell, Utopia Avenue (2020).
  • Graeber and Wengrow, The Dawn of Everything (2021).
  • Magnason, Gianstone (2022).
  • Don't Look Up (2021).
  • Cohen (ed), Prismatic Ecology (2013).
  • Calvino, Marcovaldo: Or, the Seasons in the City (1963).
  • Giggs, Noiseless Messengers (2022).
  • Iovino, Italo Calvino's Animals (2021).
  • Harman, Dante's Broken Hammer (2016).
  • Morton, Dark Ecology (2016).
  • Dunbar-Ortiz, Red Dirt (1997).
  • Cohen and Duckert (eds), Veer Ecology (2017).
  • Heller, Catch-22 (1955).
  • Shaw, Navigating the Mysteries (2022).
  • Butler, The Parable of the Sower (1993).
  • Lula Wiles, Shame and Sedition (2021).
  • Morton, Hyperobjects (2013).
  • Mitchell, Sacred Instructions (2018).
  • Ghosh, Gun Island (2019).
  • Ghosh, The Ibis Trilogy (2008-2015).
  • Tagaq, Split Tooth (2018).
  • Ghosh, The Great Derangement (2016).
  • Ghosh, The Hungry Tide (2005).
  • Menakem, My Grandmother's Hands (2017).
  • Besteman, Making Refuge (2016).
  • Lopez, Arctic Dreams (1986).

2021

  • Jemisin, The City We Became (2020).
  • Rush, Rising (2019).
  • Demuth, Living in the Bones (2021).
  • Demuth, Floating Coast (2018).
  • Dante, Purgatorio (c.1310).
  • Dante, Inferno (c.1305).
  • Iovino, Ecocriticism and Italy (2015).
  • Jemisin, The Broken Earth Trilogy (2015-2017).
  • Jemisin, How Long Til Black Future's Month? (2018).
  • Halloran, The New Bread Basket (2015).

All-time favorites:

  • Dante Alighieri
  • Italo Calvino
  • N.K. Jemisin
  • Ursula K. Le Guin
  • David Mitchell
  • Patrick Rothfuss
  • Elizabeth Rush
  • Zadie Smith
  • Virginia Woolf

Some of my all-time favorites read before 2020:

  • Calvino, Invisible Cities (1972).
  • Nordstrom, Global Outlaws (2004).
  • Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind (2007).
  • Mitchell, The Bone Clocks (2015).
  • Eliot, Four Quartets (1943).
  • Woolfe, To the Lighthouse (1927).


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