The Southern Reach: Acceptance Acknowledgments

(Some of the bunnies from Authority...)Since this is Acceptance's release day, I'm posting the acknowledgments from the back of the novel below. It's been a somewhat ridiculously herculean undertaking, and a lot of people have helped along the way. Thanks again to all of you. You can find more information on some of the books mentioned below in this HuffPo feature I wrote a few months back. Finally, a few additional thanks that should've gone in the book, to: Scott Eagle, Ed Morris, Melanie Meadors, Nikki Guerlain, Kari Wolfe, Adam Morgan, and to all of the reviewers, who have been very kind both in their appraisal of the trilogy but also in not sharing spoilers (which would've been very easy).***Many thanks to my patient and brilliant editor, Sean McDonald, who made it possible for me to write the second two books knowing someone really truly had my back. Thanks to everyone at FSG for making the experience of publishing this trilogy so wonderful: Taylor Sperry, Charlotte Strick, Devon Mazonne, Amber Hoover, Izabela Wojciechowska, and Lenni Wolff. Thanks as well to Alyson Sinclair for her excellent work on the publicity side and to Eric Nyquist for great cover art.Thanks again to my stalwart agent, Sally Harding, and the Cooke Agency. I’m also indebted to my publishers in Canada, the U.K., and in other countries for showing such imagination and energy in publishing the Southern Reach trilogy. Blackstone Audio has also been a delight to work with, and in particular Ryan Bradley.Additional thanks to first readers Clubber Ace, Greg Bossert, Eric Schaller, Matthew Cheney, Tessa Kum, Berit Ellingsen, Alistair Rennie, Brian Evenson, Karin Tidbeck, Ashley Davis, and Craig L. Gitney. Additional thanks to Kati Schardl, Mark Mustian, Denise Roberts, and the Fermentation Lounge.In thinking about and writing these books I’ve been grateful for ideas encountered in the Semiotexte series; the works of Rachel Carson and Jean Baudrillard; Taschen’s The Book of Miracles; Philip Hoare’s The Sea Inside; David Toomey’s Weird Life; Iris Murdoch’s novel The Sea, The Sea; the works of Tove Jansson (especially The Summer Book and Moominland Midwinter); Tainaron, by Leena Krohn; the nature poetry of Pattiann Rogers; The Derrick Jensen Reader, edited by Lierre Keith; Richard Jefferies’s After London; and Elinor De Wire’s Guardians of the Light.Finally, The Seasons of Apalachicola Bay, by John B. Spohrer, Jr., was like a revelation to me while writing Acceptance— a heartfelt, gorgeous, and wise book that kept me grounded in the places that made the Southern Reach trilogy personal for me.Other research meant visiting, revisiting, or remembering landscapes that spoke to me in a way useful for the fiction: St. Marks National Wildlife Refuge, Apalachicola, rural Florida and Georgia, Botanical Beach Provincial Park on Vancouver Island, the Pacific Rim National Park Reserve of Vancouver Island, the coast of Northern California, and the Fiji Islands, which gave me a certain starfish.I should also like to thank the many wonderful and creative booksellers I’ve met while on tour this year— you’ve been inspiring and energizing— as well as the enthusiastic readers willing to follow me on this somewhat strange journey. I really appreciate it.Finally, I’m humbled and my heart made glad by my wife, Ann VanderMeer, who was my partner in all of this. She encouraged me, listened to me, helped me work out knots in drafts in progress, took other work off of my desk, went well beyond the call of duty or anything in the marriage vows to allow me the time and space to write these novels. It wouldn’t have been possible without her.