Our Wild Familiars: How Animals Are Adapting to Cities and Reshaping the Natural World by Dan Werb (2026). Wild Familiars explores synanthropes, animals that are evolving to thrive alongside humans in urban environments, and all of the challenges and opportunities of cohabitation. Come for the analysis of the role synanthropes play in creating sustainable communities; stay for the octopuses in refrigerators, baboons that are taming wild dogs, bats that have found a perfect “hibernacula” in upstate New York, and ever-more intelligent raccoons.—Stephanie

Earth 7 by Deb Olin Unferth (2026). This spare, moody speculative novel imagines a depopulated Earth where survivors make homes in inhospitable places: in the desert, under the ocean, on Mars. Yet people still spend their lives pursuing knowledge, love, wonder, and half-forgotten dreams. It’s not a hopeful vision of the future, but it is a very human one: even on (or above) an Earth where so many possibilities are curtailed, these characters find many different ways to make meaning or die trying.—Sara

We’re very excited to start sharing some reading selections from our Climate Education for Writers cohort, who began meeting this month!

Compassion in Crisis: Building Disaster-Resilient Communities by Kate Rose Weiner and Kailea Rose Loften (2026). When we think about disaster preparedness, a few stock images often come to mind—lone doomsday preppers hoarding enough goods to withstand an apocalypse, billionaires building bunkers with their ill-gotten gains—that frame weathering upheaval as a highly atomized, individual act. In Compassion in Crisis, co-authors (and my dear friends!) Kate Weiner and Kailea Loften shift our orientation by compiling an expanse of materials, from conversations with frontline organizers to an herbal first-aid guide, that point the way to a vision of disaster preparedness that’s deeply grounded in relationships, shared responsibility, and a sense of “neighborism.”—Amirio

You can find Amirio’s writing in the upcoming issue of Cake Zine, Volume 8: Spoiled Rotten—An exploration of the rot endemic to sugarcane production and communing with the ghosts its left behind by Bitter Kalli and Amirio Freeman.

What are you reading lately?