STAY CONNECTED WITH US!

Environmental Organizations at UC Berkeley

UC Berkeley has over 40 student run organizations related to environmental and sustainability work! Click here and check them out now!

Green Jobs & Learning Opportunities

Looking for part-time, volunteer, full-time, or other  off-campus sustainability related opportunities? Click here to check out our Green Jobs & Learning Opportunities page here!

Top
  /  Words of the Watershed Journal

Enjoy or Contribute to Words of the Watershed Journal

What is Words of the Watershed Journal? 

WoW is UC Berkeley’s Undergraduate Journal of Local Environmental Writing. “Local” is meant to include both writing about Berkeley or the Bay Area, and writing created by people who live here in the Bay Area. Students use “environmental writing” to indicate work that explores our collective relationship with the earth and all its inhabitants. This is a space where creative, academic, and journalistic writing and art can dwell together on common ground.

Words of the Watershed Journal began as an idea. It was the idea that UC Berkeley is a watershed of environmental ideas, flowing from many directions in different forms and textures. Students wanted to create a journal that would be a physical place for all of those ideas, narratives, and perspectives to drain into, a place we can all drink inspiration from, helping us redefine our relationship with Berkeley and beyond.


 

Submit to this year’s journal!

We eagerly welcome you to submit to this year’s edition of Words of the Watershed, UC Berkeley’s environmental arts and writing journal. This year’s submission deadline is Friday, January 20th, so you will hopefully have some time over Winter Break to think, reflect, and create any sort of art or writing that speaks to your relationship with Nature, whatever it may mean to you. In the past editions, we’ve had essays on environmental justice, poetry about the ocean, prose on natural and cultural roots, paintings on the drought, drawings that serve as a call to fight climate change, and photography of our lovely local rose garden. These are only a taste of the different forms your art could manifest in, and we encourage any and every style of art that would fit in a print journal (i.e. those previously mentioned, collages, short stories, photo essays, etc.) The journal will be released during the Spring semester and will be available both in print and electronic copies. Please send in your submission via email, and fill out the Google Form so we can gather the necessary submission details. Feel free to e-mail wordsofthewatershed@gmail.com with any questions.

 

What can I do to get involved? 

Check out WoW’s upcoming events and recent photos on the Facebook page.

Submit to Wild Words, the WoW blog.

Peruse a previous WoW issue (links below), or submit to the upcoming issue (see “Recent Announcements” section)

During Fall 2016, we will be hosting weekly club meetings to continue the artistic, written, and verbal conversations surrounding humxn’s relationships with Nature and to begin the process of developing the next edition of the journal. We aim for the meetings to be collaborative spaces in which staff members share their visions for the future content and layout of the journal. We also hope to work on smaller-scale art projects throughout the semester and to collaborate with different environmental and literary organizations on campus. If you are interested in attending these meetings, please send an e-mail to wordsofthewatershed@gmail.com, so you can be added to the e-mailing list.

Here is a lovely free write from one of our recent meetings:

i thought all branches reached for the sun

these reach down
for you and for me
they surround us and pull us together
the breeze sends buds tumbling
to the moist earth
ripe with moss flourishing into all its potentiality
good company – in the trees
in the breeze
in you here with me
i feel comfortable
i feel freshness with my
body, mind, and outside
i feel present – i feel…
again without words
i try to say
that which can not
Hannah Haugenes, Class of 2019

Recent Announcements:

The third and beautiful edition of Words of the Watershed was published in April of Spring 2016. Hard copies are available for purchase, which can be organized by sending us an e-mail! 

We have just finalized the online version of the 3rd edition, the link to which can be found both below and on our Words of the Watershed Facebook page.  

In the coming months, we will be opening up the submission period for the Journal’s fourth edition, which usually falls around the end of Fall semester. Stay tuned for specific dates!


Read the journals:

The second edition of Words of the Watershed Journal was published on April 10, 2015. The first edition of Words of the Watershed Journal was released May 5, 2014. All three editions were printed by local printer, 1984 Printing using post-consumer paper and soy-based inks.

Printed copies of the first edition of Words of the Watershed Journal are free, and second and third edition Journals are available for sliding donations of $2-5. Email wordsofthewatershed@gmail.com to purchase a copy.

 

Online version of the third edition (New!):

Online version of the second edition: 

Online version of the first edition: