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The Guardian @theguardian.com · Aug 15

Magic mushrooms: how scientists discovered fungi are the secret ingredient for restoring the world’s forests

Healthy fungal networks help trees and plants grow, making them key to successful reforestation. The only problem? Almost nothing is known about this subterranean ecology

www.theguardian.com

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · 1d

Signed copies of THE LANGUAGE OF TREES now available @waterstones.bsky.social in Dorchester. Lovely to see it in the Nature section with WILD SERVICE by @righttoroam.bsky.social, DISPERSALS by @jessicajlee.bsky.social, and other beauties. 🌿

#naturewriting #booksky #rewild

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womensartbluesky.bsky.social @womensartbluesky.bsky.social · 3d

Irish artist, based in New York, Katie Holten created a New York City Tree Alphabet, each letter of the Latin alphabet is assigned a drawing of a tree from the NYC Parks #womensart

Twenty six images of differdnt trees in black on a white background

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Milena @milenarejc.bsky.social · 3d

"Trees are sanctuaries. Whoever knows how to speak to them, whoever knows how to listen to them, can learn the truth.”
Herman Hesse

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · 3d

Delighted to be part of "Letters for the Future" at the Brooklyn Public Library, opening November 3rd. The exhibition celebrates the library as one of the few remaining intellectual, creative, and civic commons still freely available.

www.bklynlibrary.org/exhibitions/... @bklynlibrary.bsky.social

Photo of two framed prints sitting on shelves in the middle of a wall of books. In the foreground, a black cat reclines on a white beanbag. A mouse, cat toy, sits on the floor nearby.

Two framed Tree Alphabet prints are in the center of the photo. They were from a limited edition series printed with Broken Dimanche Press at the Kunsterhaus Bethanien in Berlin to accompany the book, ABOUT TREES.

The wall behind is filled with books, including a series in the top right corner that show Samuel Beckett's face, when the complete set of books are placed side by side.

Purple and white graphic invite for the exhibition, Letters for the Future, at the Brooklyn Public Library. At the top of the image is the name of the organizing project: Department of Transformation.

Exhibition dates: November 3, 2025 - January 25, 2026.

Brooklyn Public Library, Central Library, Grand Lobby, 10 Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, New York.

Letters for the Future is an exhibition and series of experimental public programs curated by Department of Transformation (DOT) in collaboration with BPL Presents, the Library's Arts and Culture team. Across media and modes, the project focuses on transformative formats for reading, writing, speaking, and thinking together.

Letters for the Future celebrates the library as one of the few remaining intellectual, creative, and civic commons still freely available. The show spotlights works across media and modes—paintings, videos, sculptures, performances, works on paper, books and zines—that consider text and image relationships, distribution, and participation in unexpected ways. In tandem with the exhibition, a range of artists, designers, educators and activists will host a series of experimental public programs that aim to deepen BPL’s role as a site of social learning and community building.

Embracing an open-source ethos to share conceptual and aesthetic “tools” for public library-goers, Letters for the Future positions art and design—and the forms of collectivity, learning, healing, and resistance they can engender—as powerful agents of transformation. At a moment when rapidly advancing communication and intelligence technologies are destabilizing existing categories of authorship and systems of circulation, Letters for the Future starts from a shared curiosity about the evolution of language and text as both artistic subject and material.

Participating artists include Dexter Sinister, Emeka Ogboh, Hilma’s Ghost, Katie Holten, Lize Mogel, Monica Bonvicini & Sam Durant, Prem Krishnamurthy, and others.

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Beth Volkmann @bethvolkmann.bsky.social · 24d

Gardeners, Native Plant Enthusiasts, Ecological Minded Activists, #RobinWallKimmerer devotees - have you heard of her new initiative?

🌿 #plantbabyplant 🌿

It's just the beginning. Go here to sign up!

plantbabyplant.com

Plant, Baby, Plant - Robin Kimmerer - A Call to Action

Join a new grassroots climate movement centering nature-based solutions and ecosystem restoration. Heal land, build community, grow power!

plantbabyplant.com

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VenetiaJane’s Garden @venetiajane.bsky.social · 4d

Looking up through the tree canopies, autumn light filters through the leaves. The Japanese word komorebi describes sunlight seen through leaves — the shifting radiance where earth meets sky in gold and flame. #Autumn #Trees

A collage of nine photographs looking up through tree canopies in autumn. Leaves in shades of green, gold, orange, and red form glowing mosaics against the sky.

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · Sep 6

Last week I received 🍃very🍃exciting🍃news about my book, The Language of Trees. Can’t wait to share! Meanwhile, loving these photos shared by Ula, in a library 😍

My kind of country drive 🍃

www.instagram.com/p/DOIvmQvDGJ...

Photo taken inside a moving car. The person in the passenger seat (on the left side of this car in the UK) holds a copy of The Language of Trees in their outstretched arm. The cover is forest green with gold forest drawing and book title in white. The person wears a light sandy-brown coat. Outside, it’s raining with raindrops on the car windscreen and a green blur outside the side window and a tunnel of trees surrounds the road ahead.

Photo by @thelostlibrary

Lovely to see a tree book in the wild

Photo taken inside a moving car. A copy of Katie Holten’s book, The Language of Trees, sits on the dashboard. The cover is forest green with a forest drawing in gold and book title in white.

A reflection of the book glows brightly in the windscreen above, a mirror image.

Outside, it’s raining with raindrops on the car windscreen and a green blur as a tunnel of trees surrounds the road ahead.

Photo by @thelostlibrary on Instagram

Don’t read and drive!

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🌳🌿Lover of Trees🌿🌳 @gwtreelover.bsky.social · Jan 11

Studies have found that “forest bathing” (Shinrin-yoku) has positive physiological effects, such as blood pressure reduction, improvement of autonomic & immune functions, as well as psychological effects of alleviating #depression & improving #mentalhealth

#trees
#nature
#photography
#biophilia

A view up a large tree trunk to the tree canopy above with a huge array of stunning greens displayed in the leaves

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The Plant Initiative @theplantinitiative.bsky.social · 4d

Plant Intelligence Symposium. Free, online or in-person in Basel, Switzerland. Oct 31-Nov 2, 2025. In English. Many speakers. "...how plants can be approached aesthetically and politically as intentional and cognizing beings." plants-intelligence.ch/save-the-dat...

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · 26d

Nature and the environment permeate the language viscerally. Irish predates English by a millennium. Its early writing system, Ogham, written vertically as a series of lines and strokes, has an alphabet based on trees. The Irish language is a joy.

www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

Illustration of a new Irish Tree Alphabet. Twenty-six trees represent each letter of the English alphabet. At the bottom of the image are lines representing the Ogham alphabet, horizontal and vertical lines, looking like simple trees.

The Irish Tree Alphabet draws trees from existing native as well as non-natives that are now calling Ireland home due to the changing climate.

The trees are drawn in ink with colored water pencil filling in the leaves and fruit.

The work is rooted in the medieval Ogham alphabet which was used to write the early Irish language. The characters or letters were called feda "trees", or nin "forking branches" due to their shape.

Each letter of the Latin alphabet is given a corresponding tree: A = Ailm (Scots Pine), B = Beith (Birch), B = Coll (Hazel), etc.

The tree drawings were turned into a font called Irish Trees.

Irish Tree Alphabet by Katie Holten was made for Visual Carlow in 2020. The font is available to download, so everyone can write with Irish Trees.

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · 8d

When @ursulakleguin.com started writing a new novel, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World is the first publication focusing on her maps.

THE WORD FOR WORLD: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin is available in the US from @pointreyesbooks.bsky.social

Here: ptreyesbooks.com/book/9781068...

Photo of a book with three large pebbles on a vivid blue table. The book cover is black with title in the same shade of blue. It was published to accompany the exhibition "The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin" at AA Gallery in London, UK, 2025.

The pebbles are etched with map drawings by Ursula.

The book was edited by So Mayer and Sarah Shin, and co-published by Spiral House (imprint of Silver Press) and AA Publications, with texts by Ursula K. Le Guin, Theo Downes-Le Guin, David Naimon, and others.

When Ursula K Le Guin was writing a new story, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World presents a selection of these images by the celebrated author, many of which have never been exhibited before, to consider how her imaginary worlds enable us to re-envision our own.

Photo courtesy of Silver Press.

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · 9d

Today would have been Ursula K. Le Guin’s 96th birthday. I celebrated by visiting The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin at AA Gallery in London. What a treat! A selection of her maps & drawings. And a beautiful book! Happy birthday @ursulakleguin.com

www.aaschool.ac.uk/publicprogra...

Photo taken inside the exhibition The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin at AA Gallery in London, UK. The wall is painted a vivid blue and the title is on the wall in large shiny silver vinyl letters. On a shelf below there are stacks of the programme and map to the show, also printed in vivid blue and silver. There is also a pile of round stones large pebbles, some etched with Ursula’s drawings and some wrapped in blue cord..

The Word for World exhibition is free to visit in the AA Gallery from 10 October – 6 December 2025, Monday to Saturday, 11am–7pm.

When Ursula K Le Guin was writing a new story, she would begin by drawing a map. The Word for World presents a selectionof these images by the celebrated author, many of which have never been exhibited before, to consider how her imaginary worlds enable us to re-envision our own.

The Word for World exhibition is curated by Sarah Shin and designed by Standard Deviation, with thanks to Theo Downes-Le Guin and the Ursula K Le Guin Foundation.

The exhibition is generously supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

Photo of me holding a copy of Ursula K. Le Guin's BOOK OF CATS. My fingers hold the book open on a page that shows an adorable photo of young Ursula crouching down, smiling beside a black cat. Her hair is dark, but she has the same sharp bob haircut that she had later in life.

Behind is a window looking out from the exhibition of UKLG's maps at the AA Gallery, looking onto Bedford Square and large trees in the park.

The exhibition includes a long shelf table with copies of a selection of UKLG’s books for visitors to read.

Photo of two tree drawings made by Ursula K. Le Guin. Ink on paper.

Photo taken inside the exhibition The Word for World: The Maps of Ursula K. Le Guin at AA Gallery in London. The wall is painted a vivid blue. Hanging on the wall is a framed drawing of Stonehenge that Ursula made during a trip to the UK in the 70's.

Sitting on the shelf below the framed drawing are large rounded pebbles, some stacked in little piles and two large ones leaning against the wall. Some of the stones are engraved with Ursula's drawings. The shelf has a decorative frieze below that echoes the standing stones above.

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Anna K. @annakkowalkowski.bsky.social · Sep 7

Katie Holten, Forest Alphabet, Learning to be better Lovers. #art Helsinki

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · Sep 14

🥳 Happy birthday! My book ABOUT TREES is ten (10) years old. We launched the hand-painted, lime-green-edged beauty at Printed Matter’s NY Art Book Fair at MOMA PS1 in September 2015. I can't wait to share exciting news about the expanded sister-book, THE LANGUAGE OF TREES. Stay tuned! ☺️

A photograph of a stack of books sitting on a wooden table with one book standing beside them. The leaning book and book at the bottom of the stack have lime-green, hand-painted edges. The title is About Trees, published by Broken Dimanche Press in Berlin.

All of the other books in the stack are called The Language of Trees by Katie Holten. All the hardcover editions published by Tin House have silver trees on the spine, spelling the title in Holten's bespoke Tree Alphabet font.

The UK edition has a forest green cover and is published by Elliott & Thompson.

Behind the books, a framed tree drawing by Holten hangs on the wall.

A beautiful tree book for people who love language, landscape, life, and trees of course!

Contributors include Andrea Bowers, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Richard Powers, Ursula K. Le Guin, Zadie Smith, Tacita Dean, James Gleick,
Robert Macfarlane, Elizabeth Kolbert, Charles Gaines, Amitav Ghosh, Andrea Zittel, Aengus Woods, Pedro Reyes, Nicola Twilley, Robert Sullivan, Gaia Vince and many more.

indie publishing is the best

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · Sep 19

Happy to see my book in the wild at our local bookstore. Now there are signed copies of THE LANGUAGE OF TREES @barnesandnoble.com Union Square, NYC.

Photo of the author sitting on a stool and signing copies of her book, The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape, in Barnes and Noble Union Square, NYC.

She is a white woman wearing a black face
mask, white t-shirt, forest green linen trousers.

There is a RESIST ribbon pinned to her black tote bag. There is a climate stripe pin and Dysautonomia awareness pin on the bag.

The book has a forest green cover with gold forest, and gold B&N signed sticker.

Bright lights above, carpet below, lots of bookshelves behind.

Photo taken by kind staff member, name beginning with T.

Published by Tin House.

Read and Resist

Photo of books on bookshelves under a sign for Nature & Wildlife. There are lots of tree books, including one on the top shelf with cover facing out, showing a forest drawing. The book is called The Language of Trees by Katie Holten.

Other books include How to Read a Tree by Tristan Gooley and Rare Trees by Sara Oldfield.

Books in the Wild.

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The Plant Initiative @theplantinitiative.bsky.social · 17d

Plant, Baby, Plant is a new grassroots movement started by Robin Wall Kimmerer "to care for the Earth in the garden and in the streets." "...we will counter the forces of destruction with creative resistance in support of life." plantbabyplant.com

Plant, Baby, Plant - Robin Kimmerer - A Call to Action

Join a new grassroots climate movement centering nature-based solutions and ecosystem restoration. Heal land, build community, grow power!

plantbabyplant.com

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Emergence Magazine @emergencemagazine.bsky.social · Apr 16

“Just as nature finds a way, Robin has found her devoted readers. And during a time of tremendous environmental fear and uncertainty, we have found, to our immeasurable relief, our master teacher.” @lizgilbert.bsky.social on Robin Wall Kimmerer for Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2025.

Robin Wall Kimmerer: The 100 Most Influential People of 2025

Find out why Robin Wall Kimmerer is on this year’s list

buff.ly

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · Aug 7

Join us tomorrow for our next forest walk. Aino Maa/Johansson will take us on a journey to connect with our shared planetary body. A member of Metsäliike, Finland’s forest movement, Aino will share knowledge of forest ecology & species.

Info: helsinkibiennaali.fi/en/event/for... #HelsinkiBiennial

Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · Jun 28

Thank you to everyone who joined us for a gorgeous forest walk, Learning to be Better Lovers. It was beautiful — breathing, drawing, thinking like a forest. The next walks are on July 18, August 8, September 5. Info & sign up here: helsinkibiennaali.fi/en/artist/ka... #HelsinkiBiennial #ForestSchool

Photo of a smiling human sitting on a rock outcrop on the edge of a forest. She is barefoot with long brown hair with silver streaks and wears a white shirt and forest green trousers with a lime green face mask around her left arm.

Behind her everything is green, lush plants and trees with Birch, Linden, Ash, and Aspen most common on the island of Vallisaari.

The artist Katie Holten led a Forest Walk with breathing & drawing exercises and a conversation around Rights of Nature and the Language of Trees. Then they journeyed into the forest.

Photo by Henni Hyvärinen for HAM/Helsinki Biennial.

Photo of a group of people sitting on a rock at the edge of a forest on the island of Vallisaari in Helsinki, Finland. Bright green vegetation fills the photo with blue sky above. The humans wear mostly dark clothes, with one person in white, talking to the group. People have sketchbooks, paper and pencils. Some are barefoot. Sphaghnum, lichen and other mosses and plants group from the rock.

The Forest Walk was part of the opening weekend celebrations for the Helsinki Biennial. We received a lot of heartfelt feedback. Here’s some:

"Such a gentle and kind event, which I'll always treasure."

"I really enjoyed Katie’s way of holding space open for our discussions"

"A lovely day spent with lovely people sharing knowledge and experiences"

‘I got new ideas and perspectives on the relationship with nature’ (freely translated from Finnish)

The Biennial team is looking forward to the upcoming forest walks. Everyone is welcome.

Looking for Lichen with Jouko Rikkinen on Friday, July 18th

Forest as a teacher with Aino Mielikki Maa / Johansson on Friday, August 8th and Friday, September 5th.

Photo by Henni Hyvärinen for HAM/Helsinki Biennial.

The artwork production is supported by Culture Ireland.

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · Jul 10

Becoming Earth, an essay by Robin Wall Kimmerer for @emergencemagazine.bsky.social & @humansandnature.bsky.social

emergencemagazine.org/essay/becomi... #naturewriting

Becoming Earth – Robin Wall Kimmerer

Wandering among the ancient decomposing cedar trees of the Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon, Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer wonders what they might teach us about the nature o...

emergencemagazine.org

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Katie Holten @katieholten.bsky.social · Jun 28

Thank you to everyone who joined us for a gorgeous forest walk, Learning to be Better Lovers. It was beautiful — breathing, drawing, thinking like a forest. The next walks are on July 18, August 8, September 5. Info & sign up here: helsinkibiennaali.fi/en/artist/ka... #HelsinkiBiennial #ForestSchool

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Polly Atkin @pollyrowena.bsky.social · Jul 6

I've made a new list on @bookshop.org of books that explore nature / walking / the outdoors by disabled, neurodivergent and chronically ill writers - Nature Beyond Cure - aka our own narratives are messy and complex. Do share! #BookSky #DisabledWriters
uk.bookshop.org/lists/nature...?

Nature Beyond Cure: Disabled Perspectives

Books that explore nature and living with disability and illness from disability perspectives. No magical cures here!

uk.bookshop.org

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xartistsbooks.bsky.social @xartistsbooks.bsky.social · Jun 27

Publisher friends! Don’t miss the chance to apply for The Printed Matter Publisher Work Grant!
 For more info and to apply, please visit: printedmatterinc.submittable.com/submit/babb9...

#printerdmatterpublisherworkgrant #publishergrant #artistsbooks #printedmatter

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Susan Cushing @sdcushing.bsky.social · Jul 1

Glad you had a good massage. You’ll be sorry you asked about the books. Just finished “The Secret Lives of Trees”, now reading these two, more to come on the ereader. 😊 Book Nerd.

Covers for The Language of Trees by Kate Holten and Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake, both sitting on a handmade quilt.

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