Presentation Title: When the Land Tells Stories

Brief description or abstract: Three writers explore how art helps us see the borderlands anew—not as a line on a map, but as a living landscape shaped by memory, geology, migration, language, and belonging. At the border wall, in Tombstone, and in Bavispe, Mexico, they show how storytelling, poetry, history, and environmental observation can deepen our understanding of place. From earthquakes and aquifers to wildlife corridors and cultural memory, their work reveals the borderlands as a region where art and nature are inseparable—where landscapes tell stories, and stories help us imagine more connected futures.

Website or social media links: www.dirtyverbs.com; www.artspeakpress.com/shop/p/borderlings; www.nebraskapress.unl.edu/bison-books/9781496240415/the-quake-that-drained-the-desert/

Short biography:

Logan Phillips, author of Reckon and Tucson Poet Laureate, brings poetry, memoir, photography, and history into conversation as he interrogates the myths of the American West and reflects on what it means to love a borderland landscape marked by contradiction.

Russ McSpadden, author of Borderlings, draws from years documenting the ecological impacts of border-wall construction, creating poems that bear witness to both the wounds and wonders of the Arizona–Sonora borderlands.

Mary Reynolds, author of The Quake That Drained the Desert, uncovers the story of the devastating 1887 Sonoran earthquake and its lasting effects on water, communities, and ecosystems throughout the region.