For most of the past century, Humbug Valley, a forest-hemmed meadow sacred to the Mountain Maidu tribe, was in the grip of a utility company. Washington's White Salmon River was saddled with a fish-obstructing, inefficient dam, and the Timbisha Shoshone Homeland was unacknowledged within the boundaries of Death Valley National Park. Until people decided to reclaim them. In Reclaimers, Ana Maria Spagna drives an aging Buick up and down the long strip of West Coast mountain ranges―the Panamints, the Sierras, the Cascades―and alongside rivers to meet the people, many of them wise women, who persevered for decades with little hope of success to make changes happen. In uncovering their heroic stories, Spagna seeks a way for herself, and for all of us, to take back and to make right in a time of unsettling ecological change.

Reclaimers (Northwest Writers Fund xx)

Biographies & Memoirs

Spagna, Ana Maria

Community & Culture

University of Washington Press

For many years, Ana Maria Spagna has stayed put, mostly, in a small mountain valley at the head of a glacier-carved lake. You're so lucky to live there, people say. She is lucky. But she is also restless. In Uplake she takes road trips, flies to distant cities, fantasizes about other people's lives, and then returns home again to muse on rootedness, yearning, commitment, ambition, wonder, and love. These engaging, reflective essays celebrate the richness of it all: winter floods and summer fires, the roar of a chainsaw and a fiddle in the wilderness, long hikes and open-water swims, an injured bear, a lost wedding ring, and a tree in the middle of a river. Uplake reminds us to love what we have while encouraging us to still imagine what we want.

Uplake: Restless Essays of Coming and Going (Northwest Writers Fund xx)

Travel

United States

Reclaimers

Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus chronicles the story of an American family against the backdrop of one of the civil rights movement’s lesser-known stories. In January 1957, Joseph Spagna and five other young men waited to board a city bus called the Sunnyland in Tallahassee, Florida. Their plan was simple but dangerous: ride the bus together—three blacks and three whites—get arrested, and take their case to the U.S. Supreme Court. Fifty years later Ana Maria Spagna sets off on a journey to understand what happened and why. Spagna travels from her remote mountain home in the Pacific Northwest to contemporary Tallahassee, searching for the truth of the incident and her father’s involvement. Her journey is complicated by the fact that her father never spoke of the Sunnyland experience and died unexpectedly when she was eleven. Seeking out the other bus riders, now in their seventies, Spagna tries to make sense of their conflicting stories. Her odyssey becomes further troubled by the sudden diagnosis of her mother’s terminal cancer. Winner of the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction prize, Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus deftly weaves cultural and personal history, memoir, and reportage in this fascinating look at a family and a nation’s past.

Test Ride on the Sunnyland Bus: A Daughter's Civil Rights Journey (River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Prize)

Bison Books

How did a quintessential California girl end up earning her living in the Pacific Northwest with a crosscut saw? In Now Go Home, Spagna reflects on the journey that took her from a childhood in the suburbs of LA to a trail crew in Washington's North Cascades, where she falls in love with a place and, unexpectedly, with a woman.

Now Go Home: Wilderness, Belonging, and the Crosscut Saw

Oregon State University Press

In Potluck, Ana Maria Spagna explores the enduring human connection to place, journeying from Tijuana to a California beach to Utah's canyon country--and, always, back to the sparsely populated valley in the North Cascades she calls home.
Potluck homes in on the everyday gatherings that, over time, define a community: a makeshift wedding, an art gallery opening, a farewell potluck, a work party, a campfire, a political caucus, a funeral. "What connects us?" Spagna asks, and she reveals, again and again, the gift of community--easy and uneasy, deep and enduring and essential.

Potluck: Community on the Edge of Wilderness

Science & Math

Nature & Ecology

Greenwoman Magazine celebrates garden writing in all its forms: fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, commentary, biography, art, and comics! Daring and fun, Greenwoman is for the hip gardener who loves digging into the world of art and environmental thought that underlies gardening. Volume One features: “Organicize Me”—the humorous nonfiction account of one man challenging himself to eat 100% organic for one month. “Gone Native”—a woman mulls over stealing native plants from parks—it’s wrong, isn't it? “Hello, Doobie Tuesday”—on a visit to a Boulder, Colorado medical marijuana clinic. “The Chicken Chronicles”—a woman raising exotic breed bantam chickens in the city with her two young daughters finds that raising poultry can give you something to crow about. “A Human Birth”—The fictional tale about a woman and her penchant for finding relief only in the cool, dark soil. Poetry, including: “How to Eat a Mango,” “At the Cancun Summit,” Men at Work,” and “The Scoville Heat Index of You.” An interview on gardening, life, and creativity with award-winning novelist Carleen Brice—author of Orange Mint and Honey. A biography on famed Indian plant guru Jagadis Chandra Bose. Our columns: “Sex in the Garden;” “Slow Ride” (on sustainable living), and “The Creature Feature.” Art—Comics—Book Reviews—and more!

Greenwoman Volume 1: Germination

Crafts, Hobbies & Home

Wright, Carolyne

Murphy, Dan

Knauf, Sandra

Stusser, Michael A.

Thomas, Stephen C

Kinsey, Elisabeth

Syrovy, Eva

Gulya, Pat Cook

McDorman, Bill

Gardening & Landscape Design

Greenwoman Publishing, LLC

From celestial navigation to sharpening blades, Ana Maria Spagna outlines 100 skills you’ll find indispensable for life after an apocalyptic global catastrophe. She covers obvious needs like first aid and farming, while also providing suggestions on how to build a safe and culturally rich community through storytelling and music making. Full of quirky illustrations by Brian Cronin, this book will provoke surprise, debate, and laughter as it leads you to greater self-reliance and joy — whatever the future brings.

100 Skills You'll Need for the End of the World (as We Know It)

Arts & Photography

Graphic Design

Storey Publishing, LLC.

"Readers are along for the ride as Charlotte gets to know the complex, surprising people surrounding herand the true meaning of that lucky scar on her father's face. Think Carl Hiaasen’s Hoot meets Jerry Spinelli's Stargirl." SCHOOL LIBRARY JOURNAL "The Luckiest Scar on Earth is a thoughtful novel that centers around the maturation of both a girl and her family, and which intimates that sometimes the most difficult periods can also be the most beautiful." FOREWORD REVIEWS "This comingofage story will appeal to extreme sports enthusiasts, environmental activists, and fans of strong female characters." BOOKLIST "It's delightful to see a female snowboarder as narrator, and readerswill find distinctive characters and an underrepresented subject." KIRKUS REVIEWS "We're right there with Charlotte as she navigates avalancheprone backcountry, races in snowboarding competitions, and searches for endangered salmon. Packed with profound questions and gems of wisdom, this story will stay with me for a long time to come." LAURA RESAU, author of Red Glass and The Queen of Water "Get obsessed; stay obsessed. I remembered these words, and Ana Maria Spagna's powerful father/daughter duo, long after I finished her captivating novel. Young snowboarders, environmental activists, and teens who champion the underdog will find themselves obsessed cover-to-cover with The Luckiest Scar on Earth." MELISSA HART, author of Avenging the Owl "The Luckiest Scar on Earth is a gorgeous exploration of falling in love in unexpected wayswith a new place, with a new parent, and with a new ethic. This novel is a comingofage in the truest and fullest sense." LAURA PRITCHETT, author of Red Lightning "Ana Maria Spagna takes the reader into a heartstopping, snowboarding ride to vividly experience physical, emotional, and environmental scars." CARMEN BERNIERGRAND, author of César: ¡Sí, se puede! Yes, We Can! Fourteen-year-old Charlotte moves from the Rocky Mountains of Colorado to Washington's Cascade Mountains, where she hopes to continue training for the national snowboarding championships. After her father signs an anti-development petition, she loses access to the local resort and takes to the backcountry, where she meets nature on its own terms. When adventure turns to tragedy, Charlotte learns that even our deepest scars can be lucky ones. ANA MARIA SPAGNA lives and writes in Stehekin, Washington, a very small town in the North Cascades accessible only by foot, ferry, or float plane. She teaches creative writing in the MFA program at Antioch University, Los Angeles. Spagna writes for magazines about nature, work, and life in a small community, and is the author of several award-winning nonfiction books, including 100 Skills You'll Need for the End of the World (As We Know It), a humor-infused guide for how to live more lightly on the planet.

The Luckiest Scar on Earth

Children's Books

Science, Nature & How It Works

Torrey House Press

A personal investigative journey into the so-called Chelan Falls Massacre of 1875. Amid the current alarming rise in xenophobia, Ana Maria Spagna stumbled upon a story:&nbsp;oneday in 1875, according to lore, on a high bluff over the Columbia River, a group of local Indigenous people murdered a large number of Chinese miners--perhaps as many as three hundred--and pushed their bodies over a cliff into the river. The little-known incident was dubbed the Chelan Falls Massacre. Despite having lived in the area for more than thirty years, Spagna had never before heard of this event. She set out to discover exactly what happened and why. Consulting historians, archaeologists, Indigenous elders, and even a grave dowser, Spagna uncovers three possible versions of the event: Native people as perpetrators. White people as perpetrators. It didn't happen at all. Pushed: Miners, a Merchant, and (Maybe) a Massacre replaces convenient narratives of the American West with nuance and complexity, revealing the danger in forgetting or remembering atrocities when history is murky and asking what allegiance to a place requires.

Pushed: Miners, a Merchant, and (Maybe) a Massacre

History

Americas

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Books by Spagna, Ana Maria