Welcome to Love of Place. Most of my work celebrates our connection to the natural world.

Most recently, my Knocking on Heaven's Door is the winner in the category of science fiction in the 2016 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards and in the category of fiction in the 2016 Arizona Authors Association Awards. A number of reviewers have been enthusiastic, including the website Geeks of Doom, which makes me smile. Not many people know me as a geek of doom! But I am happy to embrace the complexity of my personality.

I'm also so pleased that Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World has been awarded the 2016 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, as well as the 2014 WILLA Award for Creative Nonfiction from Women Writing the West.

My historical fantasy Teresa of the New World won the 2015 Arizona Authors Association Award for best Children's Literature and was a finalist for the New Mexico/Arizona Book Award for Children's Literature, the WILLA Award for Children's Literature, and the May Sarton Award for Children's Literature.

These are nice landmarks in a writer's life. I would be writing regardless--but, still, whew. It's good to have some encouragement.

Feel free to contact me at http://www.sharmanaptrussell.com or through my author Facebook page, Sharman Apt Russell.


Friday, January 25, 2013



Cranes have always attracted stories. In the Southwest, the Zunis have a Crane clan to which the Creator gave the medicine seed of hail and snow, since cranes come during the first winter storms. The Navajos use a crane effigy to cure illness, and the Hopis place a crane-winged staff at the entrance to the chamber which represents their emergence from the earth. Like the Greek god Hermes, with his staff of snakes topped by crane wings, the crane is linked both to health and the underworld.

In Silver City, the Religious Society of Gila Friends make paper cranes to celebrate Hiroshima Day, a commemoration of the United States’ first use of the nuclear bomb. The Japanese have long revered the crane as a symbol of immortality, and this modern crane story is about a sick little girl named Sakado who wanted to make a thousand origami cranes but died first of radiation poisoning.
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I have no particular story about cranes, although seeing and hearing them makes me happy. That is true for many wild animals. I grew up in apartment buildings with Siamese cats and a highly-chlorinated swimming pool. Cranes are outside my normal experience, outside my personal joys and sorrows, memories, anxieties and confusion. In my world, cranes are not about immortality or disease or death. When I watch them, I am not participating more in being human, I am participating less. Perhaps this is the cause of my happiness.

I am waiting to see a crane dance. First, the bird lowers his head while lifting and spreading his wings. The head rises, the wings stroke down, and the crane jumps up. Sometimes the crane throws a stick into the air. Now another crane may start jumping, too, facing the first crane, or standing side by side. According to ornithologists, this behavior can spread through an entire group of cranes until everyone is dancing, jumping up and down, wings and heads rising and falling. The point of all this is unclear. Synchronous dancing is common among birds forming or having just formed pair bonds. But my husband Peter and our biologist friends Mike and Carol have seen cranes dance here in the Gila Valley during winter--when these cranes are finished with nesting and breeding. Dancing, then, is not just about mating. In a group, dancing can also lead to fighting or flying and seems related to excitement, stimulation, and a release of energy.

A crane dancing alone would seem so intent, like a woman doing yoga or a man performing a ritual to his god. A group of cranes dancing would be a wonderful sight, all that graceful and ungainly movement. A group of cranes dancing would make me feel special, as though handed a gift I didn’t deserve but had always coveted. It’s a good reason to keep my binoculars handy.

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