Helena Feder has published essays, interviews, and poems in venues including North American Review, The Georgia Review, Radical Philosophy, Orion, ISLE, ASAP/Journal, The Writer’s Chronicle, Another Chicago Magazine, After the Art, Guernica, Green Letters, Western American Literature, Tikkun, The Branches, Critical Read, and Terrain.org. Helena is Professor of Environmental Humanities at ECU and Editor of the national journal Tar River Poetry (www.tarriverpoetry.com). She’s the author of Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture (Routledge) and editor of Close Reading the Anthropocene (Routledge) and You Are the River (seventy-five literary responses to work in the North Carolina Museum of Art, published by the NCMA).
Her first creative book, Cat Woman in Dog Country, is forthcoming with University of Alabama Press in March 2027.
You can purchase these books here:
Editor. Close Reading the Anthropocene. Routledge, 2021.
https://www.routledge.com/Close-Reading-the-Anthropocene/Feder/p/book/9780367466596
Editor. You Are the River: Literature Inspired by the North Carolina Museum of Art. NCMA, 2021.
https://visit.ncartmuseum.org/3076/3897
Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman. Routledge, 2014 (paperback 2016).
And you can read poems, essays, and stories here:
“Love of Country.” Poem. North American Review [forthcoming, 2027]
“Fig Greed.” Essay. Terrain.org [forthcoming, December 2026]
“In the Pink.” Fiction. Defenestration. March 2026. https://www.defenestrationmag.net/2026/03/in-the-pink-by-helena-feder/
“Fast Extinction, Slow Art: on work by Henry Ossawa Tanner and Neil Welliver.” Essay. ASAP/Journal, December 15, 2025. https://asapjournal.com/feature/fast-extinction-slow-art-on-work-by-henry-ossawa-tanner-and-neil-welliver/
“Violence.” Poem. The Branches. 3. (Fall 2025).
“Camouflaged.” Poem. New Verse Review. 2.4, (October 2025). https://www.newversereview.com/issue-2-4–Halloween-2025#H25_Helena_Feder_Poem_Camoflauged
“Schizophrenic Sedona.” Essay. North American Review. June 16, 2025. https://northamericanreview.org/open-space/2025/helena-feder/schizophrenic-sedona
“French Food for the ‘New Woman.’” Essay. North American Review. October 24, 2024. https://northamericanreview.org/open-space/review-essay-helena-feder
“E pluribus unum.” Poem. A Human Art. September 2024. https://virtual-exhibit-platform.pages.dev/country-doctor/a-human-art/
“Men Love Peppy Girls.” Poem. A Human Art. September 2024. https://virtual-exhibit-platform.pages.dev/country-doctor/a-human-art/
“Ecstatic Truth.” Poem. North American Review. 309.2 (Summer 2024). 97.
“Against the Grain.” Poem. North American Review. 308.3 (Fall 2023). 43.
“What It’s Like to Be a Bat.” Poem. North American Review. 308.3 (Fall 2023). 43.
“Installation.” Poem. The Ekphrastic Review. June 2023.
“Three Sisters.” Flash fiction. The Ekphrastic Review. January 2022.
“Stealing Hunters in the Snow.” Creative nonfiction. Critical Read. July 2021.
“Cloud Chamber.” Poem. You Are the River. NCMA, 2021. 148.
“Cold Inside.” Creative nonfiction/essay. Guernica. November 2020.
“Portrait of a Gentleman.” Creative nonfiction. After the Art. September 2020.
“It’s Springtime.” Poem. ISLE. 26.4 (Autumn 2019). 1119–1120.
“Necessity Creates the World.” Poem. ISLE. 26.4 (Autumn 2019). 1120-1121.
“Beasts Among Us.” Creative nonfiction/fiction. ISLE. 23.2 (Spring 2016). 422-443.
“The Hard Facts of Life.” Poem. ISLE. 23.4 (Autumn 2016). 886-887.
“The Ineffable Pull of Being Animal.” Poem. ISLE. 23.4 (Autumn 2016). 887-888.
“Peeling Eggs.” Poem. North American Review. 301.4 (Fall 2016). 14.
“Off Balance.” Essay. North American Review. October 2016.
“Jardin des Plantes.” Poem, in “Beasts Among Us.” ISLE.23.2 (Spring 2016). 437.
Interviews:
“Wild Culture: A Conversation with Hal Whitehead.” Terrain.org, April 11, 2025. https://www.terrain.org/2025/interviews/hal-whitehead/
“Allegories for the Future: A Conversation with Lydia Millet.” The Writer’s Chronicle. February 2024.
“The Mystical Character of Mechanical Determinism: A Conversation with Robert Sapolsky.” Tikkun. November 29, 2023.
“More Fully, More Delicately Alive with Jane Hirshfield.” The Writer’s Chronicle. September 2023.
“The Art of Living: A Conversation with Chimamanda Adichie.” The Writer’s Chronicle. April 2023.
“Cathleen Schine and the Comic Tradition.” The Writer’s Chronicle. September 2022.
“Beautiful Impermanence: an Interview with Sculptor Patrick Dougherty.” Orion. June 2022. https://orionmagazine.org/article/beautiful-impermanence-an-interview-with-sculptor-patrick-dougherty/
“Dorianne Laux, Elegiac Witness.” The Writer’s Chronicle. 54.2 (November 2021). 16-25.
“Love is the Great Subject with Rebecca Newberger Goldstein.” ASAP/Journal 6.1 (January 2021). 29-48.
“Concrete Breathes: A Conversation with Ledelle Moe.” Another Chicago Magazine. October 15, 2020.
“Contradiction Is Not Disappointing: an Interview with Michael Hardt.” Capitalism Nature Socialism. 31:3 (August 2020). 42-58.
“Dreaming the Real with Marianne Boruch.” The Writer’s Chronicle. 52.3 (February 2020). 18-26.
“Science and Social Change: A Conversation with Robert Sapolsky.” ISLE. 26.3 (Summer 2019). 793-808.
“‘Never Waste a Good Crisis;’ an Interview with Mary Mellor.” Capitalism Nature Socialism. 30.4 (December 2019). 44-54.
“Hints of Insurrection: A Conversation with Stephen Dunn.” The Georgia Review. (Summer 2018). 72.2. 414-428.
“‘The Realism of Our Time’: An Interview with Kim Stanley Robinson.” Radical Philosophy. 2.1. 2017.
“‘What We Talk About When We Talk About Culture:’ Frans de Waal on Science, Morality, and the Human Animal.” Green Letters. 21.2 (2017). 199-212.
“The Universe Is Imaginative: the Art of David Robertson.” Western American Literature. 52.3 (Fall 2017). 243-266.
“This Still Present Moment: An Interview with Gary Snyder.” North American Review. 301.4 (Fall 2016). 41-47.
“Changing Nature: Stacy Alaimo and Cary Wolfe at ASLE.” ISLE. 21.4 (Autumn 2014). 873-893.