A refreshingly new literary voice celebrating natural beauty, mountain landscapes, and what it means to be truly alive and connected to nature.

Senescence – defined as the gradual process of aging – takes readers on a captivating journey through the rhythmic beauty of nature. Syrian writer Amal Alhomsi's personal account of a year in Alberta's Bow Valley creates a rich tapestry of reflections. In summer, he skillfully parallels the leaf miner's toil with the work of eschatologists. Fall explores the intricate connections among texts, land, and bodies. Winter introduces muskrats and marmots, while spring unfolds the metamorphosis of moths and reflections on love. Amid the contrasts of fire and flood, Alhomsi paints a vivid portrait of life's essence. Those who dive into this evocative narrative will forge a connection with nature and the universal themes of human experience.

Amal Alhomsi is a Syrian writer, artist, and environmental educator. His short stories and art are featured in magazines and galleries across North America. He also holds the position of editor-in-chief at Oesa Magazine and resides in Banff, Alberta.

Amal Alhomsi's profile page

"With Senescence, Amal Alhomsi offers a meditative reflection on how we mark time, from personal faith through the passing of seasons, from insectoid migration through geological erosion. Through it all the Bow Valley’s Rocky Mountains witness, watch and mark the natural deterioration of age with all the calm emotion of loss, grief and, ultimately, acceptance." —derek beaulieu, poet laureate of Banff

“While Amal Alhomsi doesn't wish for his identity (cultural or otherwise) to dictate, the captivation of Senescence lies in the clear eyes of a writer, who’s not from the Bow Valley, metabolizing the natural world around him. His perceptions request a certain attention be paid to the wider world while narrowing in on the immediate, urging us to realize our own, perhaps limited perspective on the ‘familiar’. Senescence has left me driven, indefinitely, to take notice of details I'd long taken for granted.” —Kendall Hunter, kendallhunter.ca, author of Beer Hiking: Canadian Rockies, Switzerland: The Essential Guide to Customs and Culture and Black Taxi: Shooting South Africa

“Senescence is like a loaf of fine multigrain bread, leavened with exquisite metaphors that give it expansion, texture, taste, sensation and an appetite for more. The book’s uses of metaphor, satire, philosophy and deep thought give a sense not of the world ending but of a world reborn and waiting to be discovered. Amal Alhomsi does a literary dance through a series of seasonal observations on life and on ecology that will leave you introspective, entertained and hopeful.” —Lorne Fitch is a professional biologist and the author of Streams of Consequence: Dispatches from the Conservation World and Travels Up the Creek: A Biologist’s Search for a Paddle