Creaturely and Other Essays

In compact and vivid prose, Devin Johnston's Creaturely makes forays across the border between humans and animals, seeking out intersections between culture and nature. These eight essays describe encounters with creatures common to our city parks and empty lots: dogs, crows, starlings, squirrels, mice, and owls. In each case, Johnston explores the sensory experience of his subject; with each patient observation, he edges closer to an alien consciousness.

"The author puts forward a bracing theory of partial empathy....Johnston's searching book of thought-probes goes a long way toward allowing the reader the grounding that would allow him to make empathic contacts with the animals over which he ponders....Each time another animal becomes extinct a special and irretrievable way of looking at the world is gone....Perhaps the more people that read this book, the more this absence would be poignantly felt."-The Brooklyn Rail

"Creaturely, like its subjects, eludes definition. It's a book of exquisite essays-or are they prose poems-that tessellate into something larger: a meditation, perhaps, or a vision. Johnston's subject is at once the absolute otherness of the creatures with whom we share the world's everyday spaces-dogs, owls, mice, squirrels, crows-and the worth of our attempts to get to know them. Modest, calm, and beautiful, this is an exceptional book."-Robert Macfarlane

Devin Johnston teaches at St. Louis University. He was named a finalist for the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Sources, published by Turtle Point Press.