Shale Play: Poems and Photographs from the Fracking Fields(Keystone Books)

In Shale Play, acclaimed poet Julia Spicher Kasdorf and award-winning documentary photographer Steven Rubin explore the small towns, farms, and forests of Appalachian Pennsylvania to gather the stories of these places and the working people who inhabit them. In the parlance of the oil and gas industry, “shale play” refers to a region exploited for its natural gas by means of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling—transient industrial processes that often occur far from the populations that benefit from them. Amid polarized claims about fracking and pressure to develop these areas around the world, this project gathers evidence from everyday life in the Marcellus Shale Play. Kasdorf and Rubin follow in the footsteps of the documentarians of the 1930s, such as the artists and writers of the Works Progress Administration, taking a deliberate and thoughtful approach to gather the stories of workers on pipelines and well pads, landowners and leaseholders, waitresses, ministers, farmers, retired miners, teachers, and neighbors. The resulting collage of vivid oral and pictorial testimony reveals the natural beauty of rural places as well as the disturbance and spectacle fracking creates. A passionate work of witness, Shale Play invites the reader to look beyond the easy caricatures of the white working class to create an urgent, authentic representation of a sacrifice zone that fuels America.

About the Author :
Julia Spicher Kasdorf grew up in Westmoreland, Pennsylvania. She is Professor of English and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Penn State University. Steven Rubin is Associate Professor of Art, specializing in photography, at Penn State University.

Review :
“A collage of voices, drawing in the testimonies of activists, residents, industry lawyers, and workers. Kasdorf explores the nuances and tensions of her home state without allowing any one perspective to dominate.” —Rosa Furneaux Mother Jones “The long sleep of the Appalachians has been dramatically interrupted by the sudden discovery of the Marcellus Shale. This book helps us see and understand what that has meant for the region. It's a classic tale, with echoes of the region's past—and deep implications for the planet's future.” —Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature “Rarely have I read a work that so strongly, profoundly, and empathically characterizes the history of a region through those who have labored hardest to make a decent life in a beautiful yet ravaged land. These polyvocal poems are rooted in a documentary sensibility but lift into higher registers of aesthetic experience, and along with the arresting photographs, they juxtapose the beautiful and the ugly, the natural and the industrial, the tracks of labor on the land and in the faces of the residents.” —Alison Hawthorne Deming, author of Stairway to Heaven: Poems “For nearly fifty years, my wife and I have lived in Armstrong County, Pennsylvania, a beautiful place but one with few well-paying jobs. Combine that scarcity of jobs with fracking and a gerrymandered state legislature in the pocket of extractive industries (Pennsylvania, for example, has been the only state without an extraction tax for gas). That’s the situation described by Kasdorf and Rubin in Shale Play, a powerful book about not just central Pennsylvania but much of Appalachia.” —Ed Ochester, editor of the Pitt Poetry Series “Coming on the heels of Eliza Griswold’s well-received nonfiction book Amity and Prosperity that focused on the Haney family of Washington County, and with the news that State Attorney General Josh Shapiro is conducting a criminal investigation into similar complaints of fracking related health-issues, Shale Play adds a thoughtfully complex dimension to an issue that’s far from being resolved to anyone’s liking.” —Fred Shaw Pittsburgh Current “Shale Play draws attention to what is routinely overlooked. Elegant and impassioned, it is a superb work of political and environmental art.” —Nicholas Bradley Journal of Mennonite Studies “To read the poems and look at the photos of Shale Play is to realize the complexity of American dependence on fossil fuels, the multiple sharp edges to ‘no dependence on foreign oil,’ and the complicity—and responsibility—of us all.” —Melanie Zuercher Mennonite Life “An exceptional amalgam of imagery, poetry, politics, history, and humanity.” —Jessica Cory Appalachian Heritage