Amy Leach is the author of Things That Are (2012). Her work has appeared in numerous literary journals, including A Public Space, Ecotone, Tin House, Orion and the Los Angeles Review, among others. Her work has also been included in the Best American Essays and Best American Science and Nature Writing. A graduate of the University of Iowa's MFA program in creative nonfiction, she is the recipient of the Nautilus Book Award, a Pushcard Prize, a Whiting Award in Nonfiction, and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Award. She plays bluegrass and the piano, teaches English, and lives in Bozeman, Montana.
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Things That AreEssaysFrom"In Which the River Makes Off with Three Stationary Characters"
In the seventeenth century, his Holiness the Pope adjudged beavers to be fish. In retrospect, that was a zoologically illogical decision; but beavers were not miffed at being changed into fish. They decided not to truckle their new specification, not to be perfect fish, textbook fish; instead they became fanciful fish, the first to have furry babies, the first to breathe air and the first fish to build for themselves commodious conical fortresses in the water.
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Things That AreEssaysFrom"Talent"
Frogs are too pretty for anyone to seriously believe that they disdain attention, but many frogs when they sleep try to screen themselves behind leaves and rocks, to hide from people who want to poison each other with frog poison; or people who want to cremate them into frog ash, which, when worn around the neck, foils the plague; or frog-sucking people who wish to baffle themselves, or to anesthetize an aching tooth, or to forget yesterday by toxifying their heart muscles.
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Things That AreEssaysFrom"Sail On, My Little Honeybee"
To get an idea of the relationship between the Earth and the Moon and the Sun, find two friends and have the self-conscious one with lots of atmosphere be the Earth and the coercive one be the Sun. And you be the Moon, if you are periodically luminous and sometimes unobservable and your inner life has petered out. Then find a large field and take three steps from the Earth, and have the Sun go a quarter mile away.
Things That Are:Essays
"Beautiful, graceful essays . . . It's science made into poetry . . . If you'd like a break from the awfully boring language of adulthood, from customer service numbers and insurance claims, Leach's essays are the perfect escape." —Missoula Independent [on Things That Are]
“If Donald Barthelme had made nature documentaries, the commentary might have sounded like this. Lyrical and strange, this engaging book is filled with short tales whose most perfect sentences stay with you, especially in your dreams.” —Huffington Post [on Things That Are]
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The Whiting selection committee was impressed with Ms. Leach “for the sheer audacity of her invention, for the constant bridge too far she manages to cross as she’s building it. The prose is shimmering, filled with vitality and astonishing intelligence. The moments where she makes a swerve into larger philosophic observation are absolutely mindblowing, as is the sense the pieces provide of everything we’re about to lose. She is a true original, has a remarkable mind, a glorious imagination, and shares her fascination with the largest and smallest things of this world.”