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Bioneers Learning Book Club
September 2 & 9, 2025

Is a River Alive?

By Robert Macfarlane

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What does it mean to recognize a river as a living being?

In his most anticipated book yet, Is a River Alive?, acclaimed nature writer Robert Macfarlane takes readers on an urgent and lyrical journey to explore that question — one with profound ecological, legal, and spiritual implications.

Blending immersive travel writing with deep cultural inquiry, Macfarlane traces three powerful stories of rivers at the heart of legal and planetary transformation. Alongside these journeys, he follows the delicate chalk stream near his own home — a personal thread that weaves the global narrative into something intimate and immediate.

Described by reviewers as “shattering and sublime,” “profound and playful,” and “a river of poetic prose,” Is a River Alive? invites us to reconsider our relationship with water, land, and the living systems we depend on. This book club offers a chance to slow down, read closely, and explore Macfarlane’s vivid writing in community.

Exclusive Author Session: September 9

This book club goes beyond reading Is a River Alive? — it’s a rare opportunity to connect directly with the author behind the story. Join us for a live virtual session with Robert Macfarlane, one of the most celebrated nature writers of our time, as he shares personal insights into the making of the book, the rivers and people who shaped it, and what it means to write at the confluence of ecology, culture, and imagination.

Participants will have the chance to ask questions, explore the deeper themes of the book, and connect with a community of readers moved by the idea that rivers are not just resources — but beings, with lives of their own. Don’t miss this extraordinary conversation with a master storyteller and visionary thinker.

This book club will take place on September 2, 2025, from 10:00–11:30 a.m. (PT) and September 9, 2025, from 10:00–11:30 a.m. (PT). Sessions will be held via Zoom, and recordings will be available for registrants who are unable to attend live. To participate, please be sure to have your own copy of Is a River Alive? Order your copy today. 

1st Session

Tuesday, September 2
10:00 – 11:30 a.m. (PT)

2nd Session

Tuesday, September 9
10:00 – 11:30 a.m. (PT)

Duration

90 minutes per session

Format

Live online via Zoom
(Recordings available for all registrants)

Cost

$20

About the Book

Is a River Alive? is a poetic, genre-defying exploration of rivers as living beings — and the legal, ecological, and cultural shifts needed to honor that truth.

With his signature blend of lyrical storytelling and incisive reportage, Robert Macfarlane takes readers on three extraordinary journeys: to India’s Ennore Creek, Ecuador’s cloud forests, and Canada’s Magpie River — a waterway now granted the legal rights of personhood. These stories are woven together with the quiet, personal narrative of a small English chalk stream flowing near Macfarlane’s home, reminding us that even the most local waters are bound to global currents of change.

Is a River Alive? opens our imaginations to the ancient idea that rivers are kin — and calls us to act accordingly.

“A lyrical inquiry into the implications of treating rivers as living beings worthy of reverence and legal rights. . . . Robert Macfarlane skillfully braids his immersive travel writing with illuminating historical background, all told in lithe prose. Nature lovers will be riveted.”

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review
“This book is itself a river of poetic prose, an invitation to get on board and float through the rapids of encounters with places and people, the eddies of ideas, to navigate the resurgence of Indigenous worldviews through three extraordinary journeys recounted with a vividness that lifts readers out of themselves and into these waterscapes. Read it for pleasure, read it for illumination, read it for confirmation that our world is changing in wonderful as well as terrible ways.”
Rebecca Solnit
Author of Orwell’s Roses

“One of the big publishing events (if not the biggest) of 2025—a new book by Robert Macfarlane. . . . Personal as well as political, Is a River Alive? is almost as certain to shift readerly perspectives as it is to be a bestseller.”

The Guardian
“Macfarlane, a prolific nature writer, journeys to the polluted Ennore Creek in India, recounts activist efforts to conserve the Los Cedros River in Ecuador and kayaks along Canada’s Magpie River—officially recognized as ‘a living, rights-bearing being’—in search of an answer. His resulting book is a lyrical hybrid narrative of travel, history and environmentalism.”
Miguel Salazar and Laura Thompson
The New York Times

“Like its subject, Is a River Alive? is work of flow and counter-flow. It is lyrical, evocative, closely observed, and deeply moving. Robert Macfarlane offers new ways to think and, just as importantly, feel about the majestic and mysterious nonhuman world.”

Elizabeth Kolbert
author of The Sixth Extinction

“A rich and visionary work of immense beauty. . . . Rarely does a book hold such power, passion, and poetry in its exploration of nature. Read this to feel inspired, moved, and, ultimately, alive with the world.”

Elif Shafak
Author of There Are Rivers in the Sky

“A lyrical inquiry into the implications of treating rivers as living beings worthy of reverence and legal rights. . . . Robert Macfarlane skillfully braids his immersive travel writing with illuminating historical background, all told in lithe prose. Nature lovers will be riveted.”

Publishers Weekly
Starred Review

“This book is itself a river of poetic prose, an invitation to get on board and float through the rapids of encounters with places and people, the eddies of ideas, to navigate the resurgence of Indigenous worldviews through three extraordinary journeys recounted with a vividness that lifts readers out of themselves and into these waterscapes. Read it for pleasure, read it for illumination, read it for confirmation that our world is changing in wonderful as well as terrible ways.”

Rebecca Solnit
Author of Orwell’s Roses

“One of the big publishing events (if not the biggest) of 2025—a new book by Robert Macfarlane. . . . Personal as well as political, Is a River Alive? is almost as certain to shift readerly perspectives as it is to be a bestseller.”

The Guardian

“Macfarlane, a prolific nature writer, journeys to the polluted Ennore Creek in India, recounts activist efforts to conserve the Los Cedros River in Ecuador and kayaks along Canada’s Magpie River—officially recognized as ‘a living, rights-bearing being’—in search of an answer. His resulting book is a lyrical hybrid narrative of travel, history and environmentalism.”

Miguel Salazar and Laura Thompson
The New York Times

“Like its subject, Is a River Alive? is work of flow and counter-flow. It is lyrical, evocative, closely observed, and deeply moving. Robert Macfarlane offers new ways to think and, just as importantly, feel about the majestic and mysterious nonhuman world.”

Elizabeth Kolbert
Author of The Sixth Extinction

“A rich and visionary work of immense beauty. . . . Rarely does a book hold such power, passion, and poetry in its exploration of nature. Read this to feel inspired, moved, and, ultimately, alive with the world.”

Elif Shafak
Author of There Are Rivers in the Sky

Meet the Author

Robert Macfarlane is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people, and place. His best-selling books include Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places, and Mountains of the Mind; they have been translated into more than thirty languages, won many prizes around the world, and have been widely adapted for film, music, theater, radio, and dance. He has also written operas, plays, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. He has collaborated with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally best-selling books of nature poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature. Macfarlane lives in Cambridge, England, where he is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

About the Book club program

Join us for two enriching sessions where participants will gather online, guided by the experienced host Amy Lenzo. Known for her dynamic Community Conversations events with Bioneers Learning, Amy will lead our discussions with valuable expertise.

Amy Lenzo, who pioneered the World Cafe online process and has hosted hundreds of online World Cafes with people from all over the world since then, has been hosting conscious online engagement for over a decade and has been a cutting-edge leader in creating distinctly human interactive online spaces that help us connect with ourselves, each other and the natural world.

Why You Should Participate

  • Meet the Author: Join us on September 9 for a special live session with Robert Macfarlane. Hear directly from one of the most celebrated nature writers of our time as he shares stories behind Is a River Alive? and answers your questions.

  • Connect with a Community: Engage with fellow readers who are passionate about rivers, rights of nature, and reimagining our relationship with the living world.

  • Interactive Conversations: Participate in thought-provoking discussions designed to deepen your connection to the material — and to the waters that shape our lives.

Order Your Copy Today
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