Aldo Leopold Distinguished Lectures @ UNI

"I am a child of the American West, a landscape so rich and wide that my culture trembles with terror before its power." So begins Taylor Brorby's Boys and Oil, a haunting, bracingly honest memoir about growing up gay amidst the harshness of rural North Dakota, "a place where there is no safety in a ravaged landscape of mining and fracking." In visceral prose, Brorby recounts his upbringing in the coalfields; his adolescent infatuation with books; and how he felt intrinsically different from other boys. Now an environmentalist, Brorby uses the destruction of large swathes of the West as a metaphor for the terror he experienced as a youth. From an assault outside a bar in an oil boom town to a furtive romance, and from his awakening as an activist to his arrest at the Dakota Access Pipeline, Boys and Oil provides a startling portrait of an America that persists despite well-intentioned legal protections.

"The Midwest Oil Fields are full of stories. Crude is a manifesto for people battling issues of environmental devastation, Taylor Brorby’s Crude explores what it means to be from and of a place. Through natural history, personal experience, and a sense of awe, these poems explore the northern Great Plains—its troubled history, extractive economies, and what roots us to the places we call home. In this determined collection, these poems examine everything from the pallid sturgeon and General Custer, to prostitutes and wildcatters. Through his love of the land, Brorby unearths and wrestles with the complicated place that he calls home."
https://icecubepress.com/2017/01/05/crude

"In 'Coming Alive' Taylor Brorby overcomes his trepidations and embraces the most powerful action of all standing by his words. He commits to what he values most family, home, the arts, the earth and becomes a role-model for how we can all learn to take a stand. With an introduction by Bill McKibben, an afterword by Kathleen Dean Moore, and photography by Paul Anderson, 'Coming Alive' is an intimate account of place and community: flares in North Dakota, pipeline protests, and the value of local action. 'Coming Alive' explores the wisdom in the phrase: A thousand mile journey starts with the first step. Taylor Brorby reveals a way to hope during uncertain times."
https://icecubepress.com/2017/01/05/coming-alive/