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Isaac Yuen

@ekostories.bsky.social

1.6K followers 680 following 120 posts

✒️ Writer weaving human w/ non-human stories. 🌍 Book: Utter, Earth, WVU Press 2024 🎶 Book: The Sound Atlas w/ Michaela Vieser, Reaktion Books 2025 🐫 Artwork: The Minimal Animal Project @redbubble 🐋🦋🦑 🌱 Links to everything: linktr.ee/isaac_yuen

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Sep 4

Thanks to @seventydys.bsky.social for picking up our odd little book that took us on such unexpected adventures! 🙏🔊👂

David Hayden @seventydys.bsky.social · Sep 4

‘The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds across Landscapes and Imagination’ by @michaelavieser.bsky.social & @ekostories.bsky.social, a wonderful book of 36 short essays on sound in place & imagination I commissioned for @reaktionbooks.bsky.social. Published this week.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 28d

I'll try to finish the book by the time we meet!

Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 29d

"Virginia Woolf believed that style in writing all comes down to rhythm, that once you find it, there are no wrong words."

#shortreads #creativenonfiction #flashprose #onwriting

Rhythm

by Isaac Yuen | Beyond thought.

www.short-reads.org

Reposted by Isaac Yuen

Gabino Iglesias @gabino.bsky.social · Sep 9

Your monthly reminder:

Keep writing. When no one cares, persist. When things appear to be crumbling, keep at it. When it's difficult, push through. When you feel alone, listen to the stories in your blood. Just write. The world needs your stories.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Sep 8

The writer's ritual: @michaelavieser.bsky.social unboxes our author copies of The Sound Atlas, in full hardcover glory!

Out now in the UK via @reaktionbooks.bsky.social and in Nov via @uchicagopress.bsky.social

#soundstories #deeplistening #armchairtraveler

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Sep 7

lithub.com/how-one-snai...

"What do you do when you’re about to publish your debut novel and you discover another book—released eighteen months earlier—with the same title and a strikingly similar cover? And that its plot, too, features a last-of-its-kind snail?"

How One Snail Inspired Two Novels on Two Different Continents

What do you do when you’re about to publish your debut novel and you discover another book—released eighteen months earlier—with the same title and a strikingly similar cover? And that its plot, to…

lithub.com

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Sep 4

Thanks to Dr. Miranda Melcher for chatting with us about The Sound Atlas!

Listen here: newbooksnetwork.com/the-sound-at... or wherever you get your podcast!

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Sep 4

Thanks to @seventydys.bsky.social for picking up our odd little book that took us on such unexpected adventures! 🙏🔊👂

David Hayden @seventydys.bsky.social · Sep 4

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Sep 2

Happy for the honourable mention for my Italo Calvino inspired short story titled "Tales from Coral Country"! 🪸🪸🪸

Rachel Carson Center for Environment & Society @carsoncenter.bsky.social · Sep 1

The jury and organizers of the #writingcompetition “Tell the Untold!” would like to thank all of the participants and are especially thrilled to announce the #winners.

Congrats to Felix (short fiction), Vieser (creative nonfiction), and Fraillon (reflective essay) for their remarkable submissions.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Sep 1

"...In our modern-day, faster-paced world, the hub for aeolian sounds seems centered around San Francisco...On a breezy day on a south side hilltop, a 28-meter high sound sculpture designed by Lucia and Aristides Demetrios rings through its arched and rusted beams..."

#aeolianharp #soundstories

Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Sep 1

Next stop in The Sound Atlas: San Francisco, with detours in Baden-Baden, Germany, the Aeolian Islands, Sicily, and Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts—all in an attempt to trace the history of the Aeolian harp, an ancient instrument that is played solely by the wind...

A 28 metre-high steel wind harp in San Francisco designed by Lucia and Aristides Demetrios (DougK at waymarking.com)

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Aug 30

An excerpt:
"No need to visit the now national historical landmark in New Jersey to pick up the oldest sound of all. Simply tune in to an empty channel on any radio or old analogue television – amidst the static, a residual trace from the birth of the universe..."

#soundstories #deeplistening

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Aug 30

The first chapter & stop of The Sound Atlas is, believe it or not, New Jersey.

There, in 1964, at the Holmdel Horn Antennae, began the saga of two radio astronomers accidentally tuning into a background radiation that originated from the Big Bang, changing the science of cosmology forever...

A black and white image of the Holmdel Horn Antennae in New Jersey.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Aug 28

Thanks to Kyoichi Tsuzuki, renowned photojournalist and author of TOYKO STYLE & ROADSIDE JAPAN, for this heartfelt blurb for THE SOUND ATLAS, coming out next week!

Preorder your copy here: shorturl.at/kKNn3
#soundscape #soundstories #newbook
@michaelavieser.bsky.social
@reaktionbooks.bsky.social

A blurb by Japanese photojournalist Kyoichi Tsuzuki for the Sound Atlas, a new essay collection by Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen: "I've always thought that music has nurtured me more than literature or art, but I never realized that there was such a rich soundscape outside of music! This book taught me that to 'see' sound is to touch life."

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Reposted by Isaac Yuen

Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · Aug 2

The Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition is coming round again and the shortlist is stunning.

See the whole shortlist here: www.rmg.co.uk/whats-... and there will be an exhibition of all of them at Royal Museums Greenwich after the winner is announced.

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Reposted by Isaac Yuen

Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social · Aug 2

Destabilize the system, cultivate your humanity, eschew narrow definitions of efficiency. Roam in a wildflower meadow for no reason. Give gifts with no expectation. Write an imperfect paragraph that no one else, let alone the grand fascimile machines, could write.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Jul 31

Thanks so much Constance! Hope you enjoy it!

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Jul 30

UK friends and readers, you can get 25% off the preorder of THE SOUND ATLAS at @waterstones.bsky.social using the code SUMMER25. Offer is exclusive to the Waterstones website & app and ends on 7/31:

Link at www.waterstones.com/book/the-sou...

@reaktionbooks.bsky.social #WPreorder #soundatlas 🌏👂🎶

A 25% off of preorder for The Sound Atlas by Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen at Waterstones bookstores. Offer code is SUMMER25 until July 31.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Jul 22

"Offering distance and difference in vantage, the post-post-apocalyptic allows the imaginary lens to recenter its focus on a freed moment in time, along with its sovereign, mutable future.”

A new essay up at @publicbooks.bsky.social for a new series edited by @mw-m.bsky.social: shorturl.at/WdMDg

“No Future” Lexicon: The Post-Post-Apocalyptic - Public Books

But what lies beyond the end of the world? Casting off the trappings accreted by the post-apocalyptic genre emerge stories of the post-post-apocalyptic.

www.publicbooks.org

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Reposted by Isaac Yuen

Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · Jul 22

Anxiety about the future is nothing new. As @mw-m.bsky.social writes, “Rejecting future’s seeming inevitability has defined thought and practice around the world, likely for the whole of human history.”

Our new series “No Future”: A Lexicon, begins today:

“No Future”: A Lexicon

If the future hasn’t changed in the past, how could it possibly change now?

www.publicbooks.org

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Reposted by Isaac Yuen

Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · Jul 10

“I wanted to reposition a place that is so often seen as a periphery. For people living in the Arctic, these are their homelands, so of course for them the region is the center of the world, in the sense that it’s the place where your imagination operates from.”

Are Species Timeless?: Talking with Bathsheba Demuth About the Arctic

“There was an interdependence that was very clear in the animal relationships in the Arctic.”

www.publicbooks.org

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Reposted by Isaac Yuen

Ursula K. Le Guin @ursulakleguin.com · Jun 18

We're thrilled to present the shortlist for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction:

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · Jun 11

The Hungry Tide by Amitav Ghosh
Blaze Island by Catherine Bush

Reposted by Isaac Yuen

The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · Jun 5

For #WorldEnvironmentDay today, “A Bestiary of Loss” — images of 39 recently extinct animals and their stories, from the aurochs to the ivory-billed woodpecker: publicdomainreview.org/collection/e...

A Bestiary of Loss

To mark Lost Species Day, images of 39 recently extinct animals and their stories — from the aurochs to the ivory-billed woodpecker.

publicdomainreview.org

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Reposted by Isaac Yuen

Orion Magazine @orionmagazine.bsky.social · May 25

“I’ve been on this crusade against metaphor for years,” Yiyun Li tells Manjula Martin in this conversation. “I think metaphors are not helpful when you are writing about things that are very hard to tackle.”

For garden lovers, metaphor haters, and those learning to accept grief.

Sometimes a Rose Is Just a Rose

A conversation about gardening, loss, and the end of metaphor

orionmagazine.org

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Reposted by Isaac Yuen

Jared Dahl Aldern @jdaldern.bsky.social · May 31

In Norway, herrings are losing their elders and their knowledge of migration routes. The solution? Change harvesting practices to encourage a population boom and help the fish recover their collective memory.

How These Fish Lost Their Memory

The unexpected consequences of harvesting old, wise fish

nautil.us

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