Bio and CV

Hi! My name is Holden Turner, and I write about making livable futures in the age of climate change and sea-level rise. I recently finished a masters degree in Environmental Humanities at Ca' Foscari University in Venice, Italy. Since 2020 I have collaborated on the local grain resurgence, small-scale farming, and Indigenous-led movements in Maine, USA. Having studied both Italian language and cultural ecologies for many years, I now base my research in coastal communities in Italy and the East Coast of the USA. I graduated in 2021 from Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine, with a major in environmental studies and earth & oceanographic science, and a minor in Italian studies. Friends tell me that I bring people together and ask good questions. I seek out experiences in teaching and group facilitation, especially in non-traditional settings.

Access my CV here: Holden Turner Curriculum Vitae


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

Field trip in the northern Venice lagoon, April 2024. Photo by Alexandria K.

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

Headshot 2024

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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