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Business Alliance Spotlight: NatureCulture

Northeast Wilderness Trust is delighted to welcome NatureCulture to its Business Alliance.

Business Alliance members have made a commitment to ensuring a healthy and balanced world where Nature and wildlife thrive to the great benefit of human communities. They recognize that as small business owners they can make a difference by saving wild places for future generations.

NatureCulture LLC works in the intersection of the arts, and environmental and social justice. Based in western Massachusetts, this (very) small business is a proud supporter of forever-wild landscapes. To serve their mission of connecting people to the rest of Nature, NatureCulture creates publications and events that elevate humanity’s experience of and connection to the Earth at large, and Nature right in their own backyards. Their projects emphasize the power of creative expression to inspire environmental action. One such project, Writing the Land, pairs poets with conserved lands. The poems are published in printed anthologies, and are shared through digital media (including YouTube) and events such as the annual free virtual Authors and Artists Festival, whose theme this year is Rewilding.

The Authors and Artists Festival is online this year on November 4 & 5, 2023. The festival’s featured speakers are John Davis (author of Big, Wild, and Connected) and Manoj Gautam, and the featured poets are CMarie Fuhrman and Catalina Cantú. The festival includes over 60 poets and 15 presentations large and small, including a special presentation and film screening by Northeast Wilderness Trust. Tickets will be available in October. If you miss the live event, the presentation recordings will be posted online in December.

Founder and director of NatureCulture and Writing the Land Lis McLoughlin is proud to be able to give back to Northeast Wilderness Trust. “Forever-wild is the conservation philosophy closest to my own heart,” she says. Lis credits NEWT for inspiring her to protect her own land in Massachusetts with a forever-wild conservation restriction. “Besides being inspiring in the work they do, Northeast Wilderness Trust was our very first land trust to participate in Writing the Land. I’ll always be grateful they saw potential in Writing the Land and am honored to have the opportunity to support their work.”

Since its first year in 2020, Writing the Land has expanded from the Northeast to include themed volumes such as Foodways and Social Justice and Youth Write the Land, and geographically focused books featuring Maine (2022), the Connecticut River Valley (2023), Virginia (2023), and  Washington State (2025). Northeast Wilderness Trust is a proud participant in Writing the Land; poets have visited all five NEWT Ambassador Preserves to share these wildlands’ voices with others. You can read their wild poems here, here, and here, or in the 2021 & 2023 anthologies.

Northeast Wilderness Trust extends deep gratitude to NatureCulture and other Business Alliance members for being steadfast allies of forever-wild conservation. Thank you!

Is your business conservation-minded and looking to make a difference? Northeast Wilderness Trust would love to welcome you to our Business Alliance. To learn more, click here or contact Cathleen Maine at 802.224.1000 ext. 105 or cathleen@newildernesstrust.org.

Logo art and book cover art by Martin Bridge