Our 2020 book is Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore, by Elizabeth Rush.
The Office of Library & Information Services and Ocean State Libraries have secured statewide simultaneous use of the ebook in Overdrive. You can access the ebook here: https://riezone.overdrive.com/
Anyone who does not currently have a library card can apply for a card online at oslri.org while library buildings are closed.
RARI 2020 Resource Guide for Rising
RARI 2020 Curriculum Guide for Rising
MotifRI.com articles: A Conversation with Kate Lentz and Rising with Elizabeth Rush
Events & Programming
Reading Across Rhode Island, Rhode Island’s One Book, One State community read program kicks off its 18th year by encouraging everyone to read Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore by Elizabeth Rush with this year’s Honorary Chairs; Janet Coit, Director, Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and Mark Searles, NBC 10 Chief Meteorologist. Reading Across Rhode Island is a program of the Rhode Island Center for the Book, made possible through a vibrant collaboration of librarians, teachers, book group leaders and readers from across the state.
What an incredible honor it is to have RISING chosen as Rhode Island’s One Book, One State community read selection for 2020. Five years ago, my husband and I relocated to the Ocean State, and it is here that I finished writing this book. During that time, the climate crisis has heated up calling us to new conversations about what it means to be a human on planet earth today. I so look forward to sharing RISING and the conversations it will spark with you all. – Elizabeth Rush
About This Year’s Book
FINALIST
FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE
WINNER OF THE NATIONAL OUTDOOR BOOK AWARD
A GUARDIAN BEST BOOK OF 2018
A CHICAGO TRIBUNE TOP TEN BOOK OF THE YEAR
A LIBRARY JOURNAL BEST BOOK OF 2018
A PUBLISHERS WEEKLY BEST BOOK OF 2018
A LIT HUB ULTIMATE BEST BOOK OF 2018
Hailed as “deeply felt” (New York Times), “a revelation” (Pacific Standard), and “the book on climate change and sea levels that was missing” (Chicago Tribune), Rising is both a highly original work of lyric reportage and a haunting meditation on how to let go of the places we love.
With every passing day, and every record-breaking hurricane, it grows clearer that climate change is neither imagined nor distant—and that rising seas are transforming the coastline of the United States in irrevocable ways. In Rising, Elizabeth Rush guides readers through some of the places where this change has been most dramatic, from the Gulf Coast to Miami, and from New York City to the Bay Area. For many of the plants, animals, and humans in these places, the options are stark: retreat or perish in place.
Weaving firsthand testimonials from those facing this choice—a Staten Islander who lost her father during Sandy, the remaining holdouts of a Native American community on a drowning Isle de Jean Charles, a neighborhood in Pensacola settled by escaped slaves hundreds of years ago—with profiles of wildlife biologists, activists, and other members of these vulnerable communities, Rising privileges the voices of those too often kept at the margins.
About the Author
Elizabeth Rush is the author of Rising: Dispatches from the New American Shore—which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and winner of the National Outdoor Book Award—and Still Lifes from a Vanishing City: Essays and Photographs from Yangon, Myanmar. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Washington Post, Harpers, Guernica, Granta, Orion, and the New Republic, among others. She is the recipient of fellowships and grants including the Howard Foundation Fellowship, awarded by Brown University; the Society for Environmental Journalism Grant; the Metcalf Institute Climate Change Adaptation Fellowship; and the Science in Society Award from the National Association of Science Writers. She lives in Rhode Island, where she teaches creative nonfiction at Brown University.
Elizabeth Rush author website: http://elizabethrush.net/
Elizabeth Rush on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ElizabethaRush
Contact Kate Lentz at kate@ribook.org for sets of books available to classroom teachers, library discussion groups and senior centers. Further reading lists, book discussion guides, the author’s website, audio interviews and other supplementary materials may be found on the Rhode Island Center for the Book website at ribook.org.
Rhode Island Center for the Book is a 501(c)(3) not for profit organization devoted to promoting personal and community enrichment by celebrating the art and heritage of reading, writing, making, and sharing books. Founded in 2003, the RI Center for the Book is the state affiliate of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress and resides at The Pell Center at Salve Regina University.
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2017 Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson
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2015 Norwegian By Night by Derek Miller
2014 Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan
2013 The Beauty of Humanity Movement by Camilla Gibb
2012 Caleb’s Crossing by Geraldine Brooks
2011 The Unforgiving Minute by Craig Mullaney
2010 The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows
2009 Five Skies by Ron Carlson
2008 Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen
2007 The Memory of Running by Ron McLarty
2006 Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson
2005 The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
2004 The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
2003 Wish You Well by David Baldaci