Susan Futrell is a freelance writer, essayist, and consultant, and the author of Good Apples: Behind Every Bite (University of Iowa, 2017). She has worked for many years as an educator, marketer and program developer in the sustainable agriculture and local food world. For the past 15 years she has worked with a network of orchards in the northeastern US to develop the Eco Apple® program, a nonprofit collaboration among fruit growers, marketers, and scientists to support ecological orchard practices and local fruit production in the US. She’s carried a notebook since she was ten years old, writing ‘nature notes’ about her Iowa backyard, orchards across the US, and apples in Indian-occupied Kashmir. She holds a B.S. in Geography and an MFA in nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. She lives in Iowa City and mid-coast Maine.

For the Autumn 2024 issue, Sue recommended Everything That Rises: A Climate Change Memoir, Brianna Craft, Lawrence Hill Books, 2023, 288 pages.

For the Summer 2024 issue, Sue recommended You are Here: Poetry in the Natural World, Ada Limón, Milkweed Editions, 2024, 176 pages.

For the Spring 2024 issue, Sue recommended Silent Spring, Rachel Carson, originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 1962/Mariner Books Classics (paperback), 2022, 400 pages; and Rachel Carson: Witness for Nature, Linda Lear, originally published Henry Holt & Co, 1997/Mariner Books, 2009, 688 pages.

For the Winter 2023-2024 issue, Sue recommended Echo Loba, Loba Echo: Of Wisdom, Wolves and Women, Sonja Swift, Rocky Mountain Books, 2023, 256 pages; and The Hurting Kind, Ada Limón, Milkweed Editions, 2022, 122 pages.

For the Autumn 2023 issue, Sue recommended Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild, Ellen Meloy, Vintage (Paperback) 2006, 352 pages.