Summary

Honourable Mention, 2026 Alanna Bondar Memorial Prize awarded by Association for Literature, Environment, and Culture in Canada (ALECC)

A light, literary take on an animal book for grown-ups, a tongue-in-cheek self-help column with lessons drawn from nature, a sort of hitchhiker’s guide to the more-than-human world—Isaac Yuen’s Utter, Earth is a celebration, through wordplay and earthplay, of our planet’s riotous wonders.

In a time of dirges and elegies for the natural world, Utter, Earth features odes to sloths, tributes to trilobites, and ringing endorsements for lichen. For animal lovers and readers of Brian Doyle, Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and Amy Leach, each essay of this one-of-a-kind collection combines joyous language, whimsical tangents, and scientific findings to remind us of and reconnect us with those to whom we are inextricably bound. Highlighting life that once was, still is, and all that we stand to lose, this living and lively mini encyclopedia (complete with glossary) shines the spotlight on the motley, fantastical, and astonishing denizens with whom we share this planet.

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Contents

1. Din
Yes, You Can Leave the Hospital Without Naming Your Baby
Second Best Is Best

2. Spectacle
On Sights Unseen
102 Briefly Mentioned, Mostly Living Things
The Perfect Party Guest

3. Contact
A School Is a Type of Shoal
A Hearth Is a Kind of Home

4. Exchange
A Breath in Four Parts
How to Make Friends and Keep Them Lifelong
Life Lessons from the Odd and Ancient

5. Duress
How to Debate as a Fish
Giving Up on Your Dreams
Going Down to Ground

6. Rebound
Creature Career Counseling
Reinvention Is a Matter of Necessity

7. Sustain
Pick-A-Mix, Build-A-Beast
So You Want to Write an Animal Essay

Brief Thoughts on Almost Every Mentioned, Mostly Living Thing (in Alphabetical Order)
Acknowledgments

Author

A first-generation Hong Kong-Canadian author, Isaac Yuen’s short fiction and creative nonfiction has been published in AGNI, Gulf Coast, Orion, Pleiades, PRISM International, SAND Literature and Art, Shenandoa, The Willowherb Review, and other publications. Recipient of a Pushcart Prize, he was a writer-in-residence at the Jan Michalski Foundation for Literature in Switzerland, a Science Meets Fiction fellow at the HWK Institute for Advanced Study in Germany, and an artist-in-residence with the La Napoule Foundation in France. Together with Michaela Vieser, Isaac is the co-author of The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds Across Landscapes and Imagination (Reaktion Books, 2025) and The Atlas of Deep Sea Features: Stories and Soundings from the Depths (Ullstein Verlag, forthcoming 2027). Learn more about Isaac on his website at https://ekostories.com/ or on Instagram @utter_earth.

Reviews

“To shoal is to be social, to sense together, we learn in one of Yuen’s more-than-human essays. But to school is to sweep together in unison, to dazzle with coherence. It’s this spirit of schooling that animates Utter, Earth, essays that—in their curiosity, play, and care—aim to weave us back into a world of which we are but one small part. How would our language change if we invited nonhuman others alongside us again in fellowship, if our lives not only allowed for but celebrated everything swimming just beyond the limits of what we know? It’s not time for school, it’s time to school, to school with the creatures of Utter, Earth, the lemurs, leopards, and leafcutter ants, the wombats, waterbuck, and wildebeest, to school with others to find ourselves again.”
—David Naimon, host of Between the Covers

“Utter, Earth leaps, ranges, delves—or should I say rabbits, antelopes, and elephant seals? Isaac Yuen’s playful, precise book will delight biologist and linguaphile alike. With persnickety glee and accuracy, he holds obscure facts of the more-than-human world up to the light in a style that’s a mashup of Rachel Carson, Gary Larson, Ross Gay, David Sedaris, and David Attenborough. The enthusiasm and delight of Utter, Earth is infectious, and that’s just the point. Yuen wants us to fall in love with the beings we share this amazing planet with, to realize the human way of living, breathing, birthing, eating, working, and caring is not the acme but just one option among many wonderful, amazing ways of being—and we could perhaps learn a thing or two from dung beetles and hagfish if we allowed ourselves to be curious. I laughed aloud while reading Utter, Earth, and the naturalist in me bows to the huge body of knowledge and research that permits Yuen’s accuracy to sing with such a light touch. Do yourself a favor and read every page, including the ‘Brief Thoughts on Almost Every Mentioned, Mostly Living Thing’ that serves as a quasi-appendix. You’ll leave your chair ready to appreciate the world around you anew.”
—Elizabeth Bradfield, naturalist, author of Toward Antarctica, and coeditor of Cascadia Field Guide: Art, Ecology, Poetry