Rebecca Solnit discusses how all of us are connected to one another as though we are threads woven into the fabric of the world. Storytelling is often our way of tracing these threads, starting with our personal stories and exploring outward. The effects of our stories can be subtle and powerful. Solnit explains how we make our stories and how our stories make us. She is the author of fifteen books about art, landscape, public and collective life, ecology, politics, hope, meandering, reverie, and memory. She is a recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship, a National Book Critics Circle Award, and the Lannan Literary Award. She works with the group 350.org on climate issues and is a contributing editor to Harper’s and regular contributor to the political site Tomdispatch.com. Her books include An Encyclopedia of Trouble and Spaciousness  (Trinity University Press 2014), A Field Guide to Getting Lost (Penguin Books 2006), Men Explain Things To Me (Haymarket Books 2014) and The Faraway Nearby (Penguin 2014) (a lyrical memoir) 
Interview Date: 1/22/2015        Tags: Rebecca Solnit, fabric, thread, weave, fabric of the world, storytelling, storyteller, stories, books, reading, writing, domestic violence, civil rights, discrimination, guns, college rape, mattress, medical terminology, medical language, Zen Buddhism, tourist, Susan Sontag, Monks, Military, debt, giving, receiving, Martin Luther King, Henry David Thoreau, Tolstoy, Gandhi, Iceland, Anne Chamberlain, paper island, red thread, Alzheimer’s, Art & Creativity, Writing, Philosophy, Personal Transformation