Is a River Alive? By Robert Macfarlane
The KPU Climate+ Challenge, Wild Spaces, and KPU Library invite you to join us for a virtual book club where we will discuss Is a River Alive? by British nature writer Robert Macfarlane.
This compelling book poses the question: What does it mean to recognize a river as a living being?
Since 2008, several countries around the world have adopted Rights of Nature legislation to protect rivers against ecological degradation. Yet the framework demands more than legislative reform; it requires a re-imagining of perception and a reorientation to the nonhuman world, what Macfarlane calls a river literacy.
Macfarlane travels across three continents, examining the state of rivers in Ecuador, India, and Canada, each one facing threats from mining, industrial waste, or hydroelectric projects. In his time spent on the rivers, he learns to read them not merely as natural resources but as sentient beings embedded in complex ecosystems and traditional cultures. The book blends the best of travel and nature writing, with prose that is lyrical and at times riveting.
Critics have described the work as an “impassioned, resounding affirmative to the title’s urgent question” (John Vaillant, author of Fire Weather) and a “river of poetic prose” (Rebecca Solnit, Not Too Late). Is a River Alive? has been nominated for the 2025 Wainwright Prize for Conservation Literature.
To participate in the Climate+ Challenge Book Club, borrow Is a River Alive? from KPU Library (see our library catalogue for print, audio and e-book versions) or at another book provider, and register online via Teams.
Join us for the online session on Nov 13th, 12pm (PST), facilitated by Lee Beavington, Learning Strategist and Climate + Challenge Fellow, and Sue Fairburn, Faculty of Design and Climate + Challenge Fellow.
Event Details
Title: Climate+ Challenge Book Club: Is a River Alive?
When: Thursday, November 13, 12pm-1pm (PST)
Where: Online, via Microsoft Teams (Register)
Event description: Join Climate + Challenge Fellows Lee Beavington and Sue Fairburn, for an informal, online discussion about Robert Macfarlane's Is the River Alive. Everyone is welcome!
Questions?
Contact Celia at celia.brinkerhoff@kpu.ca or Ask the library.
Past Climate+ Challenge Books
The Right To Be Cold: One Woman's Story of Protecting her Culture, the Arctic, and the Whole Planet by Sheila Watt-Cloutier
Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility, edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua
Fire Weather: The Making of a Beast, by John Vaillant
Generation Dread: Finding Purpose in an Age of Climate Crisis, by Britt Wray.
The Ministry for the Future, by Kim Stanley Robinson.
The Intersectional Environmentalist: How to Dismantle Systems of Oppression to Protect People + Planet, by Leah Thomas.
The citizen's guide to climate success: overcoming myths that hinder progress, by Mark Jaccard.