The Life Forest, by Erica Settino

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features. The Life Forest is an exploration of the author’s late-diagnoses of autism and ADHD, while drawing deeply on nature and animals as sources of inspiration, connection, and kinship. Here inner and outer landscapes are weaved together, integrating personal and familial experience, and self-understanding with interrelationship. Through these poems, Erica Settino investigates themes such as ancestry and inheritance, facing the unknown, interconnection as the foundation of all of life, and believing in the power of hope as the place from which we can begin again, and again, and again. Erica Settino is a neuroqueer, late-diagnosed AuDHDer, author, artist, and activist whose work has been published in numerous print and online literary journals, anthologies, magazines, and blogs. She is the founder of the non-profit organization, Karuna For Animals, and the author of two forthcoming books, My Mommy Is a Witch, and Autistic Arcana: A Neurodivergent Approach to Tarot Magick. More information about Erica and her work can be found on her website: erica-settino.com.