Christopher Brown

My new book A Natural History of Empty Lots is released today. I hope you like it—it distills 20 years of exploring the edgelands, working on rewilding projects, and trying to understand what such places teach us about our lives, history and future: www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/chris...

Traveling throne of the Texas Druid King, seen 10/12/26 6:02 pm, three days before the north wind blew in and brought the end of our six-month summer (just in time for Halloween)

"Founded in 2023, the Cercador Prize highlights the intersection between the bookselling trade and the labor of literary translation. Booksellers act as a bridge between readers and the market of literature, much as translators make world literature accessible to English-language readers."

The Cercador Prize is a bookseller-judged prize for literature in translation that regularly has one of the most interesting, diverse lists of books of any award list anywhere. They just launched a fundraiser with some truly delicious merch. Support these folks!

"Driving back, we traded notes on how likely it felt that the entire zone down there will soon be inaccessible to the public, completely overtaken by the company and its people, or both." A good (bad) time to read this great @christopherbrown.bsky.social piece:

We were there today as well for the bday, and similarly did our part to keep the lights on. Austin’s Alienated Majesty is one of the best-curated bookstores I have ever had the good fortune to get my brain food from, and run & staffed by really exceptional people alienatedmajestybooks.comp

Good mail day. Thanks @lifewinning.com! What a beautiful new edition of a very special book ⚡️🩶🛜 www.seeingnetworks.in/product/netw...

Roll over, Erysichthon—nice to wake up and find the NYT featuring this smart (and beautifully written) @robertmoor.com reconsideration of the animist powers of nature through a 21st century prism: www.nytimes.com/2026/09/23/o...

Wonderful account (as all of Christopher Brown’s tales are) of a packraft visit to the former Freshkills landfill in Staten Island, NYC, now rewilded. fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/in-the-bur...

Got my first “can I send you my work?” pitch from a bot

Great piece. Spent a pleasant half hour locating the landmarks and tracing the route on my phone’s map app. Staten Island is now a (cool) place where before it was just a name. And the ending sneaks up on you.

Field Notes from a trip to NYC’s rewilded landfill, with urban prairies, industrial estuaries, harriers & herons, abandoned shopping centers, 9/11 memories, and packrafting for the psychogeographer: fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/in-the-bur...

You can currently get a digital copy of *Empty Lots* for less than a cup of Saturday morning coffee, almost as cheap as the free flotsam texts one can sometimes find in an actual empty lot. But what you really want is a beautiful hardcover from your nearest indie shop: www.amazon.com/Natural-Hist...

Your Saturday morning bull armadillo

There are still some places left on my Online Nature & Environmental course at @unioftheartslondon.bsky.social - we will read work by a variety of authors, workshop pieces of writing, discuss technical issues as well as approaches to writing about place. Open to all! www.arts.ac.uk/subjects/jou...

operated by machine minds Chris Brown (aka @christopherbrown.bsky.social ) reading "Wild Cats and Predatory Robots” / at Armadillocon

Reading today's newspaper while grabbing a late lunch and reckoning with the 21st century we got, versus the ones we imagined back in the 20th

Christopher Brown's Tropic of Kansas was published in 2017, but its vision of American history is filled with disturbing parallels to our current political moment–what can we learn from the novel and its prequels, when it comes to our future?

Thanks so much to the wonderful @adeniro.bsky.social and the team @reactorsff.bsky.social for this fresh perspective on my 2017 novel Tropic of Kansas: reactormag.com/christopher-...

It’s the 200th issue of one of my favorite publications. I save each one up to read at just the right time, maybe a reward after a tough week, a salve for the environmental writer’s battered soul. Field Notes has got that magic.

Nice one from @christopherbrown.bsky.social this morning. No. 200 in the Field Notes wanders. fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/how-to-pad...

This piece by @christopherbrown.bsky.social is wonderful. I have long fantasised about exploring the Bay like this (and its East Coast cousin, the NJ Meadowlands), but there’s also the delicious fact that Mark Zuckerberg didn’t even invent the *name* for Facebook! www.newsblur.com/newsletters/...

Take me to the river. Drop me in the water - this week's Field Notes: How to paddle the Metaverse by Christopher Brown. @christopherbrown.bsky.social

South Bay is ringed by many thousands of acres of public open space. The southern boundary is hills and valleys swarming with mountain bikers and hikers, the north side is vast and flat and wet and empty of people. Kudos for a cool report from the reach of Silicon Valley edgeland that nobody visits.

Looking for signs of life in Silicon Valley, in this dispatch from a packrafting trip around its edges, with playful cryptids, a curious sea lion, and dreams of a less dystopian cyberspace (& the 200th issue of Field Notes, to its author’s surprise) fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/how-to-pad...

There's an excellent and haunting long read about Starbase here:

Best list to get on ever 🦝💚🙏

Why did the armadillo cross the road?

Truly awesome reporting. Would like see it get picked up by a major outlet, *everybody* should read it. People well-read in speculative fiction, as well as people versed in ecological nonfiction, will get how Brown’s expertise in both of those genres allows him to perfectly capture this landscape.

an essential long read

A beautiful, bleak piece of writing.

Great dispatch from one of the oddest Zones on the planet

Field Notes from a July visit to SpaceX’s South Texas Starbase, where the launch gantries tower over one of our wildest coastal wildernesses, and the alligators bellow back when the rockets fire: fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/rocket-sum...

Delighted to get two reports this morning that A Natural History of Empty Lots is among the books on display at the Obama Presidential Center’s public library branch—thanks to Paloma G. for the proof! 🫡🙏

ATTN: AUSTIN Anyone missing this dog? Found in Highland this morning. Unsure if boy or girl, because such floof. Seems young, has clean teeth, is friendly and was very hungry.

Lawyer billboard of the day (Los Fresnos, Texas):

‘you might get a different idea who the real swarm is’ Field Notes by Chris Brown @christopherbrown.bsky.social open.substack.com/pub/edgeland...

Some Semiquincentennial field notes from packrafting through the backwaters of my hometown, leafing through the papers of Sons of the American Revolution, and learning about the Midwestern locust plagues of the 1870s: fieldnotes.christopherbrown.com/p/boat-cloak...

I had a great weekend at the Writers' League of Texas Agents & Editors Conference where I moderated a panel on Saturday and was on panel Sunday. So thankful to share the stage with these great writers and I bought all of their books! Can't wait to dive into these great books!