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Dec 29, 2024 | 
latimes.com | Christopher Brown
Walking along the Colorado River behind the old factories on the east side of Austin, Texas, you might forget that you are in one of the fastest-growing cities in America. The riparian corridor below downtown is a rare zone of urban biodiversity. Herons and egrets fish the spillway. Owls, coyotes, hawks, deer and even ringtail cats thrive in the surrounding woods, within earshot of the tollway and the airport flight path.
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Oct 17, 2024 | 
nybooks.com | Ana Raquel Minian |Rachel Cusk |Sunil S. Amrith |Christopher Brown
The Crime of Human Movement Two recent books about our immigration system reveal its long history of exploiting vulnerable individuals for financial gain.
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Oct 1, 2024 | 
msn.com | Christopher Brown
Continue reading More for You
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Sep 18, 2024 | 
lithub.com | Christopher Brown
We were not looking for wildlife that morning. We were looking for breakfast. Hugo was in middle school but still an early riser, so at daybreak Sunday morning we decided to walk to the new all-natural-but-still-greasy café that an enterprising lady had converted from an old lunch counter a mile or so from our apartment. There were many easier and safer ways to get there. We could have gone on the street.
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Sep 17, 2024 | 
archpaper.com | Christopher Brown
This excerpt was originally published in A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands, Back Alleys, and Other Wild Places by Christopher Brown. It was published by Timber Press and released on September 17. Check christopherbrown.com for updates on book launch events in Texas and elsewhere. Our reflexive conception of the city as human habitat and the country as the place where we go to find nature is no longer true, if it ever was.
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Sep 14, 2024 | 
theglobeandmail.com | Christopher Brown
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Apr 17, 2024 | 
barnesandnoble.com | Christopher Brown
Read an ExcerptSample ChapterThe Secret History of Empty Lots Introduction Requiem for a Muscle Car I found the Impala by accident, on a hot Saturday morning in the summer of 2009. It was not long after capitalism had collapsed, or so we thought at the time, making the discovery of a vignette from some end of the world movie unexpectedly plausible, even though you could still hear the cars on the nearby highway mixed in with the insect chorale of the swamp.
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Feb 5, 2024 | 
hachettebookgroup.com | Christopher Brown
A genre-bending blend of naturalism, memoir, and social manifesto for rewilding the city, the self, and society. A Natural History of Empty Lots is a genre-defying work of nature writing, literary nonfiction, and memoir that explores what happens when nature and the city intersect. During the real estate crash of the late 2000s, Christopher Brown purchased an empty lot in an industrial section of Austin, Texas. The property—abandoned and full of litter and debris—was an unlikely site for a home.
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Aug 23, 2023 | 
englewoodreview.org | Christopher Brown
From Constriction to ConfidenceA Review ofPaperback: Wise Ink Creative Publishing, 2022Buy Now: [ Amazon ] [ Kindle ]Reviewed by Christopher BrownThere is a little voice in my mind that stubbornly says, “I am a fool.” A few times a day it pipes up to remind me of past mistakes, missed opportunities, or the hurtful words of others.
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Jul 27, 2023 | 
watoday.com.au | Christopher Brown
OpinionWhen I was growing up in Parramatta in the ’70s and ’80s, the Sydney CBD was a long way away. Literally. I remember trundling along the Carlingford Rail line, past Rosehill Racecourse to have to change at Clyde for the elusive yellow rattler to take me to the big smoke. And this connector train from near my home in Dundas only ran twice a day on weekends.
