Imminent Domains: Reckoning with the Anthropocene invites readers to join a contemplation of survival—our own, and that of the elements that surround us. Using research, lyric prose, and first-hand experiences, Alessandra Naccarato addresses fundamental questions about our modern relationship to nature amidst depictions of landscapes undergoing dramatic transformation.

We trace the veins of harm, memory and meaning amongst ecosystems and bioregions; through history and across continents, from the mines of Cerro Rico to the ruins of Pompeii. Arranged by five central elements of survival—earth, fire, water, air and spirit—these essays refute linearity, just as nature does.

Naccarato offers not blanket answers about our future, but rather myriad ways to find our own, individual response to an imminent question. We are being called to work together; to dig a trench deep and wide enough that the fires around us might stay at bay. How do we turn towards the fire?

Alessandra Naccarato is a writer based between Salt Spring Island, BC, and Toronto, Ontario. She was the recipient of the 2017 CBC Poetry Prize and the 2015 Bronwen Wallace Award in Poetry from the Writers' Trust of Canada, runner-up for Event Magazine's Creative Non-Fiction Prize, and two-time finalist for the Edna Steabler Personal Essay Prize and Arc Magazine's Poem of Year Contest, as well as the Constance Rooke Creative Non-Fiction Prize, among other recognitions. Alessandra holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and her poetry and nonfiction have appeared in literary magazines across Canada, including Room Magazine, EVENT, The New Quarterly, CV2, ARC Poetry Magazine, Poetry Is Dead, and elsewhere. She is the Managing Editor of Write Bloody North Publications, a newly released imprint of Write Bloody Publications (Los Angeles). Re-Origin of Species is her debut poetry collection.

Alessandra Naccarato's profile page

• Winner, Independent Publisher Book Awards in the Essay Category
• Nominated, Firecracker Award for Creative Nonfiction

“Naccarato’s genre-defying book, part memoir, part confessional, part travelogue, part manifesto, part meditation, and part embrace (of humanity, connection and kinship with a more-than-human world), soars and dips through time and space, experience and emotion, doubt and grief. Ultimately, perhaps it is about life in the thorny, tricky, challenging, and contradictory times in which we all live.” —The British Columbia Review

“Naccarato has crafted a collection of highly readable essays full of rich prose. Though the issues she grapples with are often heavy, her writing never feels hopeless. Given the current state of the world, a little hope goes a long way.” —Quill & Quire

"Thoroughly researched and superbly crafted, Alessandra Naccarato's Imminent Domains offers us something even more precious than information or a call-to-arms. It offers recognition, friendship, and the possibility of arriving—across the distance and loneliness introduced by a mounting sense of isolation, loss, and collective despair—a true connection. As a result, it also offers hope. Not as a quick-fix—a way to gloss over or ignore either the (ongoing) violences of the past or the very real challenges that face us now—but instead as an authentic mode of perceiving and activating within personal experience, doubt, and grief a broader sense of kinship." —Johanna Skibsrud, author of The Nothing That Is: Essays on Art, Literature and Being

“Naccarato has crafted a collection of highly readable essays full of rich prose. Though the issues she grapples with are often heavy, her writing never feels hopeless. Given the current state of the world, a little hope goes a long way.” —Quill & Quire

“Naccarato’s genre-defying book, part memoir, part confessional, part travelogue, part manifesto, part meditation, and part embrace (of humanity, connection and kinship with a more-than-human world), soars and dips through time and space, experience and emotion, doubt and grief. Ultimately, perhaps it is about life in the thorny, tricky, challenging, and contradictory times in which we all live.” —The British Columbia Review

"I would say Naccarato leads us into terrains of complex, contradictory, and intensely entangled curiosity, devastation, rebirth, reckoning, and wonder in these essays—but she does not lead, instead she seeks to take us by the hand—to walk, crawl, writhe, swim, sit, burrow, dissolve into our constituent parts right alongside us. To sing and be heard, to find the song in silence, is this meditation. To hover in making and unmaking amidst the reverberations the material world makes itself into, and what we, as diverse permutations of humans, make of this world. There is great vulnerability here and also the most potent learning for how to reckon with the simultaneous truths of love and damage. Naccarato holds on, and does not let go, even where the pain is deepest." —Angélique Lalonde, author of Glorious Frazzled Beings

"I would say Naccarato leads us into terrains of complex, contradictory, and intensely entangled curiosity, devastation, rebirth, reckoning, and wonder in these essays—but she does not lead, instead she seeks to take us by the hand—to walk, crawl, writhe, swim, sit, burrow, dissolve into our constituent parts right alongside us. To sing and be heard, to find the song in silence, is this meditation. To hover in making and unmaking amidst the reverberations the material world makes itself into, and what we, as diverse permutations of humans, make of this world. There is great vulnerability here and also the most potent learning for how to reckon with the simultaneous truths of love and damage. Naccarato holds on, and does not let go, even where the pain is deepest." —Angélique Lalonde, author of Glorious Frazzled Beings

“Naccarato has crafted a collection of highly readable essays full of rich prose. Though the issues she grapples with are often heavy, her writing never feels hopeless. Given the current state of the world, a little hope goes a long way.” —Quill & Quire

"Thoroughly researched and superbly crafted, Alessandra Naccarato's Imminent Domains offers us something even more precious than information or a call-to-arms. It offers recognition, friendship, and the possibility of arriving—across the distance and loneliness introduced by a mounting sense of isolation, loss, and collective despair—a true connection. As a result, it also offers hope. Not as a quick-fix—a way to gloss over or ignore either the (ongoing) violences of the past or the very real challenges that face us now—but instead as an authentic mode of perceiving and activating within personal experience, doubt, and grief a broader sense of kinship." —Johanna Skibsrud, author of The Nothing That Is: Essays on Art, Literature and Being

“Naccarato’s genre-defying book, part memoir, part confessional, part travelogue, part manifesto, part meditation, and part embrace (of humanity, connection and kinship with a more-than-human world), soars and dips through time and space, experience and emotion, doubt and grief. Ultimately, perhaps it is about life in the thorny, tricky, challenging, and contradictory times in which we all live.” —The British Columbia Review