My Forests

Join award-winning author and art historian Janine Burke in this enchanting and illuminating meander along forest trails within art, myth, history and present day.

The narratives in My Forests are a pleasure to read; like strolling down a meandering track through the trees, you never quite know what you'll discover around that next bend.

Travel the ancient Incense Road with the Biblical Magi. Enjoy the dancing Olive groves of Tuscany and read of 'sleeping' Silver Birches. Witness the spectacular tree houses of the Korowai of West Papua. Visit tree sitter Miranda Gibson, whose 449-day protest against clearfelling in Tasmania's Tyenna Valley led to a World Heritage listing.

In this enlightening and entertaining book, Janine Burke invites you to accompany her through forests, art and writing, cities and parks, deserts and gardens, rainforests and wetlands, exploring the connections between trees and civilisations, past and present.

My Forests: Travels with Trees presents the role of trees in contemporary life in a world where most people don't live in the wild, and their acquaintance with nature comes from many sources.

About the Author

Janine Burke is an art historian, curator and novelist. In 1977, she was the inaugural art history lecturer at the Victorian College of the Arts. She published Australian Women Artists- 1840-1940 (1980) and won the 1987 Victorian Premier's literary award for Second Sight. Her books on the Heide Circle include Joy Hester (1983) and The Heart Garden- Sunday Reed and Heide (2004). She wrote The Gods of Freud- Sigmund Freud's Art Collection (2006) and curated Freud and Eros- Love, Lust and Longing for the Freud Museum London (2014). More recently, Burke has focused on nature. After writing Nest- The Art of Birds (2012), she curated an exhibition of nests at McClelland Sculpture Park+Gallery. In 2016, she curated Human/Animal/Artist- Art Inspired by Animals there. She is Honorary Senior Fellow, Centre of Visual Arts, University of Melbourne.