Looking over the results of the Orion Book Award, there are some books on the list I already know are good reads, and others that I’m excited to get ahold of. But I’m also struck by the absence of fiction or poetry — as with the National Outdoor Book Awards, and with most of the publishers engaged with environmental literacy, ecology, sustainability, etc., the only “creative” genres represented are memoir and personal essay. Nothing against those valuable genres, but why don’t the environmental movement(s) or the nature writing world or even the world of outdoor enthusiasm seem to take much interest in more imaginative writing? Where would we be without stories, imagined stories, to help us envision a new world which we can use all of these more down-to-earth books to help build?