Preorder marina’s new book: feathered forest
Woodpecker drum roll…My new book Feathered Forest: Aloft with Birds in Ancient Trees is ready for you to preorder. I’ve learned preorders build momentum, support authors, and help publishers decide how many books to print and bookstores how many to order. You can preorder here or from a local independent bookstore, like Dudley’s Bookshop & Cafe in Bend where I live. And Bend folks–mark your calendar for my book launch at Dudley’s on the official release date of the book, Tuesday, September 8, 2026, 5:30 to 7 pm.
I’m grateful to my talented team at Chelsea Green Publishing and to the fabulous author David George Haskell for writing an eloquent and visionary foreword. The bird-filled cover conveys the magical way of sunlight filtering down through tall trees to illuminate ferns, moss, and flowers. Thanks to artist Dayna Walton for the cover art.
I first fell in love with wild forests living within Mount Rainier National Park at age eight. It wasn’t until 2022 that I ascended a rope into the canopy of a 200-foot-tall Douglas-fir within the H. J. Andrews Experimental Forest in Oregon’s western Cascades. There, in the company of bird biologist and PhD candidate Nina Ferrari, I awakened to a three-dimensional world as interlocking and miraculous as feathers.
A new book began to take shape. Chelsea Green accepted my proposal in September of 2024. Then, I had every excuse to immerse in my happy place—among birds and wild trees of Cascadia, mostly in western and eastern Oregon, with dips into the redwoods and my old haunts of western Montana, where I followed kingfishers for many years on Rattlesnake Creek (leading to Halcyon Journey, In Search of the Belted Kingfisher, published by Oregon State University Press in 2022).
My writing is a blend of lyricism, science, and memoir. My desire is for readers to feel intimately connected to sensory beauty and ultimately inspired to help save threatened ancient forests everywhere.
