Make Believe Worlds We Built Together, by Amy Le Ann Richardson

Poetry, chapbook, 32 pages, from Bottlecap Features. This collection explores how the world we’re living in is really an illusion. We are on borrowed time at the rate we extract and use resources. It touches on how it was so much easier in the days of childhood playing make believe in nature, but in adulthood it is easier to focus on the terrible impact humanity has on our environment. Living amid the climate crisis means sleepless nights and a lot of time wondering when the next extreme weather event is going to happen and wondering if we will be ready. If we can be ready. Make Believe Worlds We Built Together explores moments of connection to forests and streams, memories built in time outdoors, and contemplation about what is next for us and this world. It celebrates a love for trees and wild spaces and a desperate need for nature as it crumbles around us. Amy Le Ann Richardson was born and raised in Morehead, KY and holds an MFA from Spalding University (‘09). Amy works for Community Farm Alliance as the EKY Food System Resiliency Coordinator. She is a farmer, writer, visual artist, and teacher and has received grants and fellowships from the Kentucky Foundation for Women. She is the author of Who You Grow Into, Finishing Line Press, 2024, and her work has been featured in several publications such as Pine Mountain Sand & Gravel, Change Seven, and Kentucky Monthly. Amy lives and works on her family farm in Carter County, Kentucky writing poems and stories, growing veggies, making maple syrup, and homeschooling her two kids with her husband, Channing.