iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 07/09/2026

Four animals, featured on vintage book covers. tinyurl.com/5n6wh58n 🐡 #AnimalArt #vintage

The King Penguin, as featured on a vintage book cover.

The Beaver, as featured on a vintage book cover.

The Pronghorn, as featured on a vintage book cover.

The Cave Lion, as featured on a vintage book cover.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 04/09/2026

An air-breathing fish that can live inside a lair. A tongue-eating louse that uses a fish AS a lair. tinyurl.com/sc268jfu #SciArt 🐡

The West African Lungfish. Can entomb itself inside a mucous cocoon during a drought.

The Tongue-Eating Louse: Out of a job and a home as a parasite if the host dies.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 02/09/2026

Between Two Birds: The Antipodean Albatross & the King Penguin 🐡 #BirdArt tinyurl.com/36pceeyn

Antipodean Albatross (Diomedea antipodensis)

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Tom Snarsky @tomsnarsky.bsky.social · 01/09/2026

RIP Wendell Berry 💜

For an Absence
When I cannot be with you I will send my love (so much is allowed to human lovers)
to watch over you in the dark— a winged small presence who never sleeps, however long the night. Perhaps it cannot protect or help, I do not know, but it watches always, and so you will sleep within my love within the room within the dark.
And when, restless, you wake and see the room palely lit by that watching, you will think,
"It is only dawn," and go quiet to sleep again.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 31/08/2026

Skipjack Tuna: Has the highest percentage of skeletal muscle devoted to movement in the animal kingdom 🐡 Available here: tinyurl.com/472sa7ys #AnimalArt

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Four Fantastic Fishes from the Minimal Animal Archive 🐡 Available here: tinyurl.com/bdcunbkj #SundayFishSketch #AnimalArt

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Pacific Flying Squid: Lights from industrial fishing boats can be seen from space. 🐡 www.redbubble.com/shop/ap/1668...

Pacific Flying Squid. Lights from industrial squid fishing boats can be seen from space.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 27/07/2026

"The northern bottlenose is only moderately mysterious. Its blow is a little small and bushy and hard to see. It does not care to show off its fluke while resting at the surface. Yet it can be courteous enough, courageous enough, to approach boats, to say hello..." At @orionmagazine.bsky.social

orionmagazine.org

A Statistically Average Whale - Orion Magazine

Consider the northern bottlenose

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 26/06/2026

"AN AESTHETIC IS BUILT BY YEARS. Schools. Streets. Asides. Friends. Ethics. Science. The land. Family. Big Dreams. Drive. Privilege, or the absence of. Repeated suggestion over a period of time, masquerading as Personal Choice."

orionmagazine.org

Blue Balloon in White Pine - Orion Magazine

A meditation on Mylar, maggots, and the compulsion to pay attention

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

"Looking to grow, transform, or simply hide away from the reality, SAND 29 cocoons itself into various liminal spaces — communities, homes, languages, bodies..." sandjournal.com/product/sand...

ekostories.com

Phases, SAND Literature and Art

Delighted to have a new short story featured in SAND: Literature and Art, a Berlin-based literary journal featuring work by writers, translators, and artists from around the world: “Looking t…

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Brigit Strawbridge @brigitstrawbridge.bsky.social · 08/01/2026

'Trees' - by Japanese artist Soichiro Tomioka (1922–1994) who loved to paint snowy landscapes #trees #art

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 03/01/2026

"The authors’ collective voice⎯a marvel of craft, this one cohesive voice from two writers⎯blends David Attenborough’s pathos with Carl Sagan’s awe and a dash of Werner Herzog’s bleakness." A book review of The Sound Atlas by @michaelavieser.bsky.social and I over at @hippocampusmag.bsky.social

hippocampusmagazine.com

REVIEW: The Sound Atlas - Michaela Viser, Isaac Yuen | Hippocampus Magazine

A review of The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds Across Landscapes & Imagination by Michaela Viser and Isaac Yuen, from Lindsay Pharr in our Nov-Dec 2025 issue.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 28/12/2025

"Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen have produced an informative and romantic gazetteer of the sounds that resonate in our souls...The Sound Atlas makes a too rarely considered case for a quieter kind of ecology, within which essential sounds can have broadcasting bandwidth." #bookreview #soundatlas

engelsbergideas.com

Musica universalis

The eye did not always have primacy over the ear. Humanity once valued spiritual hearing over spiritual seeing.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 17/12/2025

Thanks to Chris Berdik, author of Clamor: How Noise Took Over the World―and How We Can Take It Back, for this lovely review of The Sound Atlas: #bookreview #soundatlas #soundstories

clamoring.substack.com

Space Jams and Other Sonic Wonders

Plus some acoustic odds and ends for your enjoyment

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

Some of the best selling designs from The Minimal Animal Project over the past year, available in apparel! www.redbubble.com/people/iyuen... #animalart #minimaldesigns #sciart

A shirt with a minimal design of a duckbill platypus.

A shirt with a minimal design of an American robin.

A shirt with a minimal design of a red-crowned crane.

A shirt with a minimal design of an axolotl.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 11/12/2025

A few of my favourite books this year, from writers I very much admire: ✨ Skin by Catherine Bush ✨ Endling by Maria Reva ✨ The Way Around by Nicholas Triolo ✨ Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn #books2025 #shortstories #travelwriting #naturewriting #metafiction

Books titles featuring Skin by Catherine Bush, Islands of Abandonment by Cal Flyn, Endling by Maria Reva, and The Way Around by Nicholas Triolo.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

@michaelavieser.bsky.social and I had such a lovely chat with Sam Hankin, owner of the Wellington Square Bookshop and host of The Avid Reader. You can watch and listen to our conversation about The Sound Atlas below!

youtu.be

Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen - The Sound Atlas

YouTube video by Wellington Square Bookshop

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-i... "What would it mean to build, farm and move across the planet with kinship, not conquest, as our organizing principle? What would a different world – one that works with nature, and not against it – look like?"

theguardian.com

The last frontier of empathy: why we still struggle to see ourselves as animals | Megan Mayhew Bergman

Champions of exceptionalism say humans hold a unique moral status. Yet there’s only one species recklessly destroying the planet it needs to survive

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 10/09/2025

"Virginia Woolf believed that style in writing all comes down to rhythm, that once you find it, there are no wrong words." #shortreads #creativenonfiction #flashprose #onwriting

short-reads.org

Rhythm

by Isaac Yuen | Beyond thought.

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Gabino Iglesias @gabino.bsky.social · 09/09/2025

Your monthly reminder: Keep writing. When no one cares, persist. When things appear to be crumbling, keep at it. When it's difficult, push through. When you feel alone, listen to the stories in your blood. Just write. The world needs your stories.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 08/09/2025

The writer's ritual: @michaelavieser.bsky.social unboxes our author copies of The Sound Atlas, in full hardcover glory! Out now in the UK via @reaktionbooks.bsky.social and in Nov via @uchicagopress.bsky.social #soundstories #deeplistening #armchairtraveler

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 07/09/2025

lithub.com/how-one-snai... "What do you do when you’re about to publish your debut novel and you discover another book—released eighteen months earlier—with the same title and a strikingly similar cover? And that its plot, too, features a last-of-its-kind snail?"

lithub.com

How One Snail Inspired Two Novels on Two Different Continents

What do you do when you’re about to publish your debut novel and you discover another book—released eighteen months earlier—with the same title and a strikingly similar cover? And that its plot, to…

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Thanks to Dr. Miranda Melcher for chatting with us about The Sound Atlas! Listen here: newbooksnetwork.com/the-sound-at... or wherever you get your podcast!

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 04/09/2025

Thanks to @seventydys.bsky.social for picking up our odd little book that took us on such unexpected adventures! 🙏🔊👂

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 02/09/2025

Happy for the honourable mention for my Italo Calvino inspired short story titled "Tales from Coral Country"! 🪸🪸🪸

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 01/09/2025

Next stop in The Sound Atlas: San Francisco, with detours in Baden-Baden, Germany, the Aeolian Islands, Sicily, and Walden Pond in Concord, Massachusetts—all in an attempt to trace the history of the Aeolian harp, an ancient instrument that is played solely by the wind...

A 28 metre-high steel wind harp in San Francisco designed by Lucia and Aristides Demetrios (DougK at waymarking.com)

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 30/08/2025

The first chapter & stop of The Sound Atlas is, believe it or not, New Jersey. There, in 1964, at the Holmdel Horn Antennae, began the saga of two radio astronomers accidentally tuning into a background radiation that originated from the Big Bang, changing the science of cosmology forever...

A black and white image of the Holmdel Horn Antennae in New Jersey.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 28/08/2025

Thanks to Kyoichi Tsuzuki, renowned photojournalist and author of TOYKO STYLE & ROADSIDE JAPAN, for this heartfelt blurb for THE SOUND ATLAS, coming out next week! Preorder your copy here: shorturl.at/kKNn3 #soundscape #soundstories #newbook @michaelavieser.bsky.social @reaktionbooks.bsky.social

A blurb by Japanese photojournalist Kyoichi Tsuzuki for the Sound Atlas, a new essay collection by Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen: "I've always thought that music has nurtured me more than literature or art, but I never realized that there was such a rich soundscape outside of music! This book taught me that to 'see' sound is to touch life."

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Helen Czerski @helenczerski.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

The Astronomy Photographer of the Year competition is coming round again and the shortlist is stunning. See the whole shortlist here: www.rmg.co.uk/whats-... and there will be an exhibition of all of them at Royal Museums Greenwich after the winner is announced.

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Dr. Elizabeth Sawin @bethsawin.bsky.social · 02/08/2025

Destabilize the system, cultivate your humanity, eschew narrow definitions of efficiency. Roam in a wildflower meadow for no reason. Give gifts with no expectation. Write an imperfect paragraph that no one else, let alone the grand fascimile machines, could write.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 30/07/2025

UK friends and readers, you can get 25% off the preorder of THE SOUND ATLAS at @waterstones.bsky.social using the code SUMMER25. Offer is exclusive to the Waterstones website & app and ends on 7/31: Link at www.waterstones.com/book/the-sou... @reaktionbooks.bsky.social #WPreorder #soundatlas 🌏👂🎶

A 25% off of preorder for The Sound Atlas by Michaela Vieser and Isaac Yuen at Waterstones bookstores. Offer code is SUMMER25 until July 31.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

"Offering distance and difference in vantage, the post-post-apocalyptic allows the imaginary lens to recenter its focus on a freed moment in time, along with its sovereign, mutable future.” A new essay up at @publicbooks.bsky.social for a new series edited by @mw-m.bsky.social: shorturl.at/WdMDg

publicbooks.org

“No Future” Lexicon: The Post-Post-Apocalyptic - Public Books

But what lies beyond the end of the world? Casting off the trappings accreted by the post-apocalyptic genre emerge stories of the post-post-apocalyptic.

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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 22/07/2025

Anxiety about the future is nothing new. As @mw-m.bsky.social writes, “Rejecting future’s seeming inevitability has defined thought and practice around the world, likely for the whole of human history.” Our new series “No Future”: A Lexicon, begins today:

publicbooks.org

“No Future”: A Lexicon

If the future hasn’t changed in the past, how could it possibly change now?

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Public Books @publicbooks.bsky.social · 10/07/2025

“I wanted to reposition a place that is so often seen as a periphery. For people living in the Arctic, these are their homelands, so of course for them the region is the center of the world, in the sense that it’s the place where your imagination operates from.”

publicbooks.org

Are Species Timeless?: Talking with Bathsheba Demuth About the Arctic

“There was an interdependence that was very clear in the animal relationships in the Arctic.”

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Ursula K. Le Guin @ursulakleguin.com · 18/06/2025

We're thrilled to present the shortlist for the 2025 Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction:

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The Public Domain Review @publicdomainrev.bsky.social · 05/06/2025

For #WorldEnvironmentDay today, “A Bestiary of Loss” — images of 39 recently extinct animals and their stories, from the aurochs to the ivory-billed woodpecker: publicdomainreview.org/collection/e...

publicdomainreview.org

A Bestiary of Loss

To mark Lost Species Day, images of 39 recently extinct animals and their stories — from the aurochs to the ivory-billed woodpecker.

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Orion Magazine @orionmagazine.bsky.social · 25/05/2025

“I’ve been on this crusade against metaphor for years,” Yiyun Li tells Manjula Martin in this conversation. “I think metaphors are not helpful when you are writing about things that are very hard to tackle.” For garden lovers, metaphor haters, and those learning to accept grief.

orionmagazine.org

Sometimes a Rose Is Just a Rose

A conversation about gardening, loss, and the end of metaphor

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Jared Dahl Aldern @jdaldern.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

In Norway, herrings are losing their elders and their knowledge of migration routes. The solution? Change harvesting practices to encourage a population boom and help the fish recover their collective memory.

nautil.us

How These Fish Lost Their Memory

The unexpected consequences of harvesting old, wise fish

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 31/05/2025

I share a memory from the cult-classic Earthbound as a videogame that showcases the magic of mushrooms in the latest issue of @orionmagazine.bsky.social #mushrooms #fungi

orionmagazine.org

What We’re Playing in 2025 - Orion Magazine

Games featuring the magic of mushrooms

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 16/05/2025

Always nice to have a full list of birdcalls in Merlin within a minute. 🐦

A list of songbirds on the Merlin bird ID app.

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Ian Tattum @iantattum.bsky.social · 05/05/2025

A short review of a rich and fascinating new book from @reaktionbooks.bsky.social by @ekostories.bsky.social and Michaela Vieser

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 29/04/2025

First proof for The Sound Atla I co-wrote with @michaelavieser.bsky.social is here! Final version is coming out this fall. Let me know if you are interested in reviewing it.

Cover of The Sound Atlas: A Guide to Strange Sounds Across Landscapes and Imagination

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Jane Goodall Institute of Canada @janegoodallcan.bsky.social · 26/04/2025

"I won't give up. I won't. I'll fight harder." Dr. Jane always says what we need to hear. 💚 When she was asked how she keeps going, even when times are tough and the world feels bleak, she doubled down with her inspiring message. Watch this video for her answer. 📹: Queen Elizabeth Theatre

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 25/04/2025

Four front-facing creatures from The Minimal Animal Project. More here: rb.gy/mz064a #animalart #sciart

A Glass Frog (Sachatamia orejuela) from the Minimal Animal Project.

A Red Panda (Ailurus fulgens) from The Minimal Animal Project.

An Axolotl (Ambystoma mexicanum) from The Minimal Animal Project.

A Furred Sponge Crab (Pseudodromia latens) from The Minimal Animal Project.

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 22/04/2025

It's Earth Day 🌍, and I'm happy to share this conversation I had with curator Mary Woodbury over at Dragonfly: An Exploration of Eco-Fiction, as part of a spotlight on the works of Hayao Miyazaki: dragonfly.eco/isaac-yuen-o... #earthday #ecofiction #hayaomiyazaki #ghibli #nausicaa #totoro #mononoke

An image from Princess Mononoke, a film by Hayao Miyazaki.

An image from My Neighbour Totoro, a film by Hayao Miyazaki.

An image from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, a film by Hayao Miyazaki.

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Center for Humans & Nature @humansandnature.bsky.social · 18/04/2025

🎧 Weekend listening: An Elementals special series from The Becoming Nature #podcast with host Carina Lyall. Out now— Episode 1: Fire 🔥 feat. Rina Garcia Chua & @ekostories.bsky.social and Episode 2: Water 🌊 feat. Hannah Close & Lyanda Fern Lynn Haupt. Listen: www.carinalyall.com/en/en-becomi... 🎙️

Text above an image of water says, "Elementals Special; Ep 2 Water. Carina Lyall. April 8, 2025"

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Isaac Yuen @ekostories.bsky.social · 03/04/2025

An old essay of mine on The Legend of Zelda videogame series, published over at Newfound, a nonprofit publisher whose celebrated work "investigates how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding." newfound.org/archives/vol... #zelda #nintendo #hyrule #creativenonfiction #essay

The opening of an essay on The Legend of Zelda titled "Journeys of HYRULE_", published in 2019 by Newfound, a nonprofit publisher whose celebrated work investigates how place shapes identity, imagination, and understanding. #videogames #zelda #creativenonfiction #essay

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