“I consider this book to be a masterpiece. Katie Holten’s tree alphabet is a gift to the printed world.” —Max Porter, author of Grief is the Thing with Feathers
NATIONAL BESTSELLER | IRISH TIMES BESTSELLER
The paperback edition of THE LANGUAGE OF TREES will be published in the US on April 2nd, 2024.
Pre-order now from your local indie bookstore!
“Inspiring.” —Washington Post
“Forests fed us, housed us, and made our way of life possible. But they can’t save us if we can’t save them. Holten introduces a tree alphabet. Each letter is represented by the striking silhouette of a tree.” —Jill Lepore, New Yorker
"Over 50 writings from notable authors, philosophers, scientists and artists―including Plato, Ursula K. Le Guin and Ada Limón―are delicately translated into Holten’s visual “tree alphabet” in this ode to the world’s trees."
—New York Times Book Review
THE LANGUAGE OF TREES by Katie Holten
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
An instant Bestseller in the U.S and Ireland, Holten’s compendium is a love letter to our vanishing world.
“The Language of Trees” is inspiring; many of its writers merge the lyric with insights that are scientific, intimate and surprising.” —Kristen Millares Young, Washington Post
Contemplating the language of trees “might incline us to be less brutal, less extractive,” writes poet and essayist Ross Gay in his introduction. “It might incline us to give shelter and make room. The language of trees might incline us to patience. To love. It might incline us to gratitude.”
Succumb not to despair, despite the odds. “There is hope because the women of the rainforest are rising up,” writes Waorani Indigenous leader Nemo Andy Guiquita in “Mujer Waorani/Waorani Women.” Erudite, impassioned and intentional, “The Language of Trees” is a call to action for those who still care.
"Inspiring. . . . insights that are scientific, intimate and surprising. . . . a call to action for those who still care."
―The Washington Post
INTRODUCTION by Ross Gay
CONTRIBUTORS include Jorge Luis Borges, Andrea Bowers, Inger Christensen, William Corwin, Nicole Davi, Tacita Dean, Camille T. Dungy, Åse Eg Jørgensen, Brian J. Enquist, Extinction Symbol, Amy Francheschini, Futurefarmers, Charles Gaines, Forrest Gander, Ross Gay, Amitav Ghosh, James Gleick, Nemo Guiquita, Fritz Haeg, Amy Harmon, Rachael Hawkwind, César A. Hidalgo, Luchita Hurtado, Natalie Jeremijenko, Toby Kiers, Eduardo Kohn, Elizabeth Kolbert, Irene Kopelman, Ada Limón, Aimee Nezukumatathil, Winona LaDuke, Jessica J. Lee, Ursula K. Le Guin, Maya Lin, Ada Lovelace, Robert Macfarlane, Agnes Martin, E.J. McAdams, Susan McKeown, Roz Naylor, Lucy O’Hagan, Katie Paterson, Carl Phillips, Richard Powers, Thomas Princen, Radiohead, Pedro Reyes, Mary Reynolds, Sumana Roy, Valerie Segrest, Zadie Smith, Anna-Sophie Springer, Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder, Suzanne Simard, Robert Sullivan, Rachel Sussmann, Sojourner Truth, Nicola Twilley, Gaia Vince, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Kinari Webb, Jonathon Miller Weisberger, Tanaya Winder, Aengus Woods, Andrea Zittel and others.
Back cover, dust jacket for The Language of Trees. Design Beth Steidle.
“Unmissable.” —LitHub
Tree Alphabet, 2015. Katie Holten’s tree drawings were turned into a bespoke font called Trees. The font was used to translate a compendium of writing about trees.
If literature is looking for a way forward in the Anthropocene, surely this is a place from which to start. —Stephen Sparks
ABOUT THE BOOK
Robert MacFarlane writes “There is no lone tree language, but a forest of tree languages.” In THE LANGUAGE OF TREES, Katie Holten invites us to enter some of these forests. She created a Tree Alphabet to translate a compendium of well known, loved, lost and new writing. She takes readers on a journey from creation myths and cave paintings to the death of a 3,500 year-old cypress tree, from Tree Clocks in Mongolia and forest fragments in the Amazon to Emerson’s language of fossil poetry, unearthing a grove of beautiful stories along the way.
The Language of Trees considers our relationship with literature and landscape, resulting in an astonishing fusion of storytelling and art and a deeply beautiful celebration of trees through the ages. Holten unearths a new way to see the natural beauty all around us and provides an urgent reminder of what could happen if we allow it to slip away.
"Science and storytelling are braided with history and art to create something quietly urgent and beautiful here. This is nature writing in a new way, full of tree magic."
―Buzzfeed
Another World is Possible
An extract from Katie Holten’s afterword to The Language of Trees.
A few years before I was born, Christopher Stone, a Professor of Law at the University of Southern California, had an epiphany while speaking with his students—what if trees, like people, had rights? “I am quite seriously proposing that we give legal rights to forests, oceans, rivers and other so-called ‘natural objects’ in the environment,” he wrote.
Today the movement to recognize these Rights of Nature is inspiring people around the world, with Indigenous communities leading the way. Almost all successful Rights of Nature cases—so far—protect bodies of water. Why not trees? Paul Powlesland, founder of Law for Nature, told me, “I’m not aware of a draft Rights of Trees in general as they seem more difficult to conceptualize than rivers.” I believe we will soon see Rights for Forests and Trees.
The Climate Emergency demands that we learn the languages of trees and speak on their behalf. Learning other languages creates empathy, compelling us to reconsider our relationships with other beings. If trees have memories, respond to stress, and communicate, what can they tell us? And will we listen?
Listening, speaking, reading and writing are how humans communicate and make sense of the world. The alphabet is how we organize information and knowledge; our networked world depends on it. Trees, the font, lets us renew our relationships with language, landscape, perception, time, memory and reading itself by slowing the reader down to decipher words in the woods.
Translation is perhaps the most intimate form of reading. When we translate our words into glyphs, such as trees, it forces us to re-read everything. The Tree Alphabet forces us to revisit the past, re-present the present, and reimagine the future by translating or rewriting what we think we already know.
And so letter by letter, tree by tree, we can reforest our stories, communities and our imaginations, reimagine public spaces, reconsider “monuments” and restore biodiversity while rewilding language. We can also ingest the alphabet, seeding our stories in plant DNA, encoding messages at the molecular level. History shows us that we become the stories we tell ourselves and our children. What stories do we want to leave behind? What do we want our ancestors to remember us for?
BOOK TOUR 2023-2024
UPCOMING EVENTS:
April 2, 2024 | US paperback, published by Tin House
April 17, 2024 | Details coming soon | House of Hackney, London, UK
May 7, 2024 | 7.30 PM GMT | Virtual: details coming soon | TREE TALKS: Trees, Communication, and Connection, Wordsworth Trust, UK
May 16, 2024 | Details coming soon | Keynote speech, Sorbonne, Paris, France
July, 2024 | Details coming soon | Zabriskie, Berlin, Germany
PAST EVENTS:
November 30, 7 PM GMT | Wild Women Writers’ Salon (Virtual event, register here) | with Kerri ní Dochartaigh, Marchelle Farrell and host Victoria Bennett
November 2, 6-8 PM EST | PRINTED MATTER, 231 11th Avenue, New York City | In conversation with contributors to the book William Corwin, Nicole Davi and Amy Harmon
UK/Ireland edition published June 15
June 14, 7-8 PM GMT | FESTIVAL OF NATURE (Virtual event, register here) [SOLD OUT]
June 15, 6 - 7.30 PM GMT | LAUNCH EVENT for the Irish/UK edition of THE LANGUAGE OF TREES | In conversation with Anja Murray at the IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, Dublin, Ireland (Free, book here)
June 16, Bloomsday, 12.30 PM GMT | Garden Party to celebrate Ulysses, Forested, MUSEUM OF LITERATURE IRELAND, Garden courtyard, Dublin, Ireland
June 16, Bloomsday, 3.30 - 4.30 PM GMT | In conversation with Manchán Magan & Paul McMahon, The Vico, DALKEY BOOK FESTIVAL, Dalkey, Dublin, Ireland [SOLD OUT]
June 18, 1 - 2 PM GMT | Tree Walk & Talk, IRISH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, Dublin, Ireland | with Stephen O’Neill (Free, register here) [SOLD OUT]
June 20, 6.30 PM GMT| STANFORDS, Bristol, UK
June 21, 7.30 -8.30 PM GMT | Sam Reads Booksellers, Grasmere, UK (Virtual. Register here)
June 22, 6.30 PM GMT | FOLDE Dorset at the Grosvenor Arms, Shaftesbury, UK [SOLD OUT]
June 24, 11.15 AM GMT | In conversation with Gaia Vince, WEALDEN FESTIVAL, Garden Tent, Boldshaves Garden, Ashford, Kent, UK
June 25, 11 AM - 3 PM GMT | WILD KEN HILL, Norfolk, UK | Space is limited, book here [CANCELLED]
June 28, 6 - 8 PM GMT | New School of the Anthropocene|October Gallery, 24 Old Gloucester Street, London, WC1N 3AL, UK (Register here)
July 1, 7 - 8.30 PM GMT | In conversation with Helen Baczkowska, NORFOLK WILDLIFE TRUST, Cley Marshes ‘Cley Calling’ event, UK [CANCELLED]
July 10, 6.30 PM GMT | In conversation with Cal Flynn, WEST CORK LITERARY FESTIVAL, Maritime Hotel, Bantry, Cork, Ireland
July 11, 2 - 3 PM GMT | In conversation with Maria Kirrane, University College Cork, Boole Library, Cork, Ireland (Recording here)
July 12, 5 PM GMT | The Language of Trees, Burren College of Art, Ballyvaughan, Clare, Ireland
July 18, 7.30 PM GMT | The Language of Trees, Hometree HQ, Ennistymon, Co. Clare, Ireland [CANCELLED]
July 23, 3.30 - 4.30 PM GMT | The Language of Trees, Fiddler’s Green Festival, Rostrevor, Co. Down, Northern Ireland (Event will take place in the Lecture Hall in Rostrevor after a gathering in Rostrevor’s ancient Oak Wood)
July 24, 6-8.30 PM GMT | The Language of Trees and Rights of Nature, Queen’s University Belfast, Canada Room in the main Lanyon Building, Belfast, Northern Ireland (Free, register here)
July 25, 6 PM GMT | The Language of Trees, Dundalk Library, Dundalk, Co. Louth | Recording here
August 15, 2.15 PM GMT | In conversation with Katie Paterson, EDINBURGH INTERNATIONAL BOOK FESTIVAL, Edinburgh, Scotland
August 23, 5.30 PM ET: Polly Hill Arboretum, in partnership with Bunch of Grapes Bookstore, West Tisbury, Martha’s Vineyard, MA, USA [SOLD OUT]
August 26, 4 PM ET: Chilmark Library, Chilmark, Martha’s Vineyard, MA, USA
PAST EVENTS: US BOOK TOUR
Tin House edition published April 4, 2023
BOOK LAUNCH, Tuesday April 4, 6 PM ET | In the Elizabeth Street Garden in partnership with McNALLY JACKSON. Under the trees in the Elizabeth Street Garden, between Prince & Spring Streets, New York City
April 6, 7 PM PT : In conversation with Forrest Gander at GREEN APPLE BOOKS ON THE PARK, San Francisco, CA (Livestream will be available here)
April 8, 6 PM PT | EUREKA BOOKS, Eureka, California
April 9, 4 PM PT | TSUNAMI BOOKS, Eugene, Oregon
April 11, 7 PM PT | In conversation with David Naimon at POWELL’S, Portland, Oregon
April 12, 7 PM PT | In conversation with Valerie Segrest at ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY, Seattle, Washington
April 16, 5 PM CT | In conversation with Erin Sharkey at MAGERS & QUINN, Minneapolis, Minnesota
April 18, 7 PM CT | In conversation with Liam Heneghan at EXILE IN BOOKVILLE, Chicago, Illinois
April 22, Earth Day, 3 PM ET | In conversation with Jennifer Mamola at POLITICS & PROSE, Washington, D.C. (Connecticut Avenue location)
April 23, 4 PM ET | In conversation with Amy Franceschini and Robert Sullivan at HEAD HOUSE BOOKS, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
April 26 | In conversation with Laura Hunt at Manuel’s Tavern in partnership with A CAPPELLA BOOKS, Atlanta, Georgia.
April 28, Arbor Day 7 PM ET | TREES NY, New York City (Virtual event. Register here)
May 10, 7 PM ET | In conversation with Rebecca McMackin at the HARVARD BOOKSTORE, Cambridge, MA
May 12, 7 PM ET | In conversation with Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder at BACK COVE BOOKS, Portland, ME
May 19, 7 PM ET | In conversation with Patty Krawec at Hallwalls Contemporary Art Center, in partnership with TALKING LEAVES BOOKS, Buffalo, NY
May 21, 11AM - 2PM ET: ARTPARK, Lewiston, NY (Tree Workshops with WNY Book Arts Center, Talking Leaves, and Patty Krawec)
September | Events in New York City & Los Angeles coming soon
MORE DATES COMING SOON:
Shakespeare & Co., Missoula, Montana
Point Reyes Books, Point Reyes Station, California
Santa Fe, Vermont, New Hampshire, and more?
Get in touch if you would like Katie to speak about The Language of Trees with your book club, local bookstore, arboretum, library or museum!
PRAISE for Katie Holten’s book ABOUT TREES
Katie Holten on Turning Words and Paragraphs into Whole Forests
Interview with Stephen Sparks, LITHUB
Read the Tree Leaves, With an Artist's Invented Tree Font
Ella Morton, ATLAS OBSCURA
For Naturephiles Only: A Typeface Made Of Trees
Meg Miller, FAST CO DESIGN
Typographic Forestry and Other Landscapes of Translation
Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG
Translating Borges into Trees: An Interview with Katie Holten
Katrine Ogaard Jensen, Asymptote
About Trees by Katie Holten
Stephen Sparks, The Improbable
“This book is a beautiful revelation, a calming and wonderful source of comfort and inspiration from the green world all around us. I love it so much.”
—Jeff VanderMeer, NYT bestselling author of the Southern Reach trilogy
"It ranges from short texts by Robert Macfarlane ... to James Gleick, and from Amy Franceschini to Natalie Jeremijenko. These join a swath of older work by Jorge Luis Borges, with even Radiohead ("Fake Plastic Trees") thrown in for good measure.
It's an impressively nuanced selection, one that veers between the encyclopedic and the folkloric, and it has been given a great and memorable graphic twist by the fact that Holten generated a new font using nothing less than the silhouettes of trees.
Every letter of the alphabet corresponds to a specific species of tree."
—Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG
"The political resistance movements of the future could communicate secret messages with trees—and go down in history as the slowest revolution ever.
Holten is in full compliance with these plans, and actually has a few ideas of her own. "I was reading about the Obama library today. Their budget is something like $1 billion. I immediately was thinking, 'I wonder if they are thinking about landscaping the garden and need some sort of typographic forest?" she says with a laugh. "I feel like this is just beginning, there's a lot more to come. More volumes—and I want [the typeface] to be planted in real life, too."
—Meg Miller, FAST CO DESIGN
"About Trees is strange, surprising, mysterious, and true. Holten has managed to put together an anthology that's far more than the sum of its parts: this is as much an evocation of the spirit of trees as it is a collection of texts on the subject. It's a book/work of art. It's also gorgeous. I adore it."
—Daniel Smith, author of Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety
"Gently reaching, beautiful, bountiful—Katie Holten's About Trees translates pulp and ink into a new language of roots and branches, a bewildering, awilding forest of words as strange as it is unforgettable. Learning to live in the Anthropocene means learning to see, listen to, and speak with our world in whole new ways; About Trees helps us begin that transformation."
—Roy Scranton, author of Learning to Die in the Anthropocene
"It is essentially an edited compilation of texts about, yes, trees, but also about forests, landscapes of the anthropocene, unkempt wildness, altered ecosystems, and, more broadly speaking, the idea of nature itself."
—Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG
"A work of art, About Trees offers new and vital considerations for the contemporary moment. About Trees rewards readers for taking time to slow down and engage."
—Jamie Kruse, co-editor, Making the Geologic Now
"The political resistance movements of the future could communicate secret messages with trees—and go down in history as the slowest revolution ever.
Holten is in full compliance with these plans, and actually has a few ideas of her own. "I was reading about the Obama library today. Their budget is something like $1 billion. I immediately was thinking, 'I wonder if they are thinking about landscaping the garden and need some sort of typographic forest?" she says with a laugh. "I feel like this is just beginning, there's a lot more to come. More volumes—and I want [the typeface] to be planted in real life, too."
—Meg Miller, FAST CO DESIGN
"It ranges from short texts by Robert Macfarlane ... to James Gleick, and from Amy Franceschini to Natalie Jeremijenko. These join a swath of older work by Jorge Luis Borges, with even Radiohead ("Fake Plastic Trees") thrown in for good measure. It's an impressively nuanced selection, one that veers between the encyclopedic and the folkloric, and it has been given a great and memorable graphic twist by the fact that Holten generated a new font using nothing less than the silhouettes of trees. Every letter of the alphabet corresponds to a specific species of tree."
—Geoff Manaugh, BLDGBLOG
"The effect of these translations is beautiful and also unsettling, with text rendered into often dense and illegible forests. The reader—inasmuch as we can read natural phenomena—cannot help but feel disoriented as About Trees poses vital questions about the nature of art and of nature in an age of environmental catastrophe; about the power of language to convey meaning; and about why and how we conceive of the natural world."
—Stephen Sparks, The Improbable
"Coolest book in which I've ever been anthologized."
—Amy Harmon, on twitter
"...how inspiring your new arboreal font/typeface is."
—Robert MacFarlane, in an email to the artist
ABOUT THE BOOK
US Publication Date: April 4, 2023
US Publisher: Tin House
ISBN: 9781953534682
Hardcover: 320 pages
Size: 6.0 x 9.0 x 1.5 inches
Designer: Beth Steidle
Language: English and Trees
Published in Ireland and the UK by Elliott and Thompson on June 15, 2023.
Font: The book is typeset in Essones, Garamond Premier Pro and Trees, a bespoke typeface created by Katie Holten. Download the Trees font here.
The Language of Trees will be published as a hardcover with a foil-stamped case. The interior will be printed with a soy-based green ink on 100% recycled paper stock, sourcing all materials responsibly. Printed in the United States of America by Tin House, distributed by W. W. Norton & Company. Printed in Ireland and the U.K. by Elliott & Thompson, distributed by Simon & Schuster.
THE BOOK’s STORY
THE LANGUAGE OF TREES is an expanded celebration of Katie Holten’s 2015 book ABOUT TREES. That book grew out of her Sunday Salons and drawings commissioned for the group exhibition About Trees at the Zentrum Paul Klee in Bern, Switzerland, October 17, 2015 – January 24, 2016.
ABOUT TREES was the first book in Broken Dimanche Press's series: Parapoetics - a Literature beyond the Human. Recognizing a crisis of representation as our species adapts to life in the Anthropocene, About Trees considers our relationship with language, landscape, and perception.
UNIQUE TREE ALPHABET PRINTS
If you would like to support Katie Holten’s book tour for THE LANGUAGE OF TREES you might like to purchase a unique print. Katie made New York City Tree Alphabet screen prints at the Rockaway Artists Alliance in 2019. There are only a limited number available so please message her studio for info: studio@katieholten.com
Katie Holten, Roxbury, Connecticut, May 2022. Photo: Dillon Cohen.
“Another World is Possible.” Katie Holten’s Afterword for The Language of Trees, translated into Trees.
Introduction by Ross Gay
What do trees have to do with it?
John Holten and Katie Holten in conversation with Jessamyn Fiore at the Kitchen in New York City, September 24, 2015.
The conversation explores their respective individual and collaborative work as visual artists, writers, curators, publishers, and academics, focusing on Katie’s book About Trees, their first collaboration.
The evening celebrated the second printing of About Trees, published by Broken Dimanche Press, co-founded by John Holten.
Katie Holten’s Bibliography for The Language of Trees, translated into Trees.
"I think of the book as an archive of human knowledge filtered through branches of thought."
—Katie Holten, interviewed by Asymptote
ABOUT TREES, second print edition, Berlin, 2016
“An appealing, celebratory offering with an urgent message.” —KIRKUS
Katie Holten with a Moreton Bay Fig Tree that was planted by a little girl in 1876, Santa Barbara, California. Photo by Dillon Cohen. 2021.
A recording of Katie Holten’s virtual talk with TREES NY celebrating Arbor Day 2023.
