Guidance from the God of Seahorses
Guidance from the God of Seahorses is a collection of prose poems about Earth’s ongoing sixth mass extinction. The poems are written as advice columns from a series of Gods, each of whom speaks as the creator of a particular species. Through profiling fifty animals—many threatened or endangered, others thriving weed-like in urban centers—the Gods grapple with pressing environmental issues such as climate change, habitat fragmentation, and the spread of invasive species. Collectively, Guidance offers a “God’s-eye-view” of the Anthropocene that is simultaneously playful and sorrowful, inspiring a renewed sense of gravity about our planet’s vanishing species.
Keats Conley holds a doctorate in biology from the University of Oregon’s Institute of Marine Biology, where she spent six years researching gelatinous plankton. Her research has been published in reputable scientific journals such as Nature Microbiology, PLOS One, and Limnology and Oceanography. Keats now lives in southern Idaho and works as an environmental biologist to assess proposed management actions on fish and wildlife. She enjoys writing poetry as a means of sharing science with a broader audience, particularly to help cultivate a sense of urgency about global biodiversity loss. Guidance from the God of Seahorses is her first book.
