Sally Cole-Misch is a writer, author and environmental communicator who advocates for the natural world through work and play. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and a master’s degree in environmental education and international water policy from the University of Michigan. Her novel, “The Best Part of Us”, reflects her love for the Great Lakes Region and her respect for Indigenous People.
On your nightstand now: City of Girls by Elizabeth Gilbert, Horizon by Barry Lopez, The Island Within by Richard Nelson, and The Outside Boy by Jeanine Cummins and The Plant Messiah by Carlos Magdalena on Libro
Favorite book when you were a child: Here Comes the Bus by Carolyn Haywood and all Winnie the Pooh books by A.A. Milne
Your top five authors: Hard to choose just five, but consistent choices that rarely disappoint are Alice Hoffman, Sue Monk Kidd, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Louise Erdrich, and Christina Baker Kline.
Book you’ve faked reading: I’ve never faked reading anything, but I admit I’ve never been able to finish James Joyce’s Ulysses, in spite of loving A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man ever since I first read it in high school lit class.
Book you’re an evangelist for: Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer for its intelligence, kindness, and the calm gratitude I feel every time I read any portion of it.
Book you’ve bought for the cover: H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald, and because the inside was just as beautiful also bought her latest, Vesper Flights
Book you hid from your parents: I didn’t hide reading Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged from them, but they were surprised I was reading someone with such an ultra-conservative philosophy. At 18, I enjoyed the sense of self-reliance she portrayed in her characters.
Book that changed your life: Just one? I have to cheat and say Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver and Merle’s Door: Lessons From a Freethinking Dog by Ted Kerasote
Favorite line from a book: Where the Crawdads Sing by Delia Owens : “Months passed, winter easing gently into place, as southern winters do. The sun, warm as a blanket, wrapped Kya’s shoulders, coaxing her deeper into the marsh. Sometimes she heard night-sounds she didn’t know or jumped from lightning too close but whenever she stumbled, it was the land that caught her. Until at last, at some unclaimed moment, the heart-pain seeped away like water into sand. Still there, but deep. Kya laid her hand upon the breathing, wet earth, and the marsh became her mother.”
Five books you’ll never part with: The Maytrees by Annie Dillard, The Third Angel by Alice Hoffman, The Overstory by Richard Powers, One Thousand White Women by Jim Fergus, and my grandmother’s note-filled copy of Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Book you most want to read again for the first time: The Hidden Life of Trees by Peter Wohlleben
