No Room, Save in the Heart: Poetry and Prose on Reverence for Life--animals, Nature & Humankind

Ann Cottrell Free

Jan 1987 · Flying Fox Press

About this ebook

Selections in this beautifully illustrated and presented book reflect moments of deep sorrow and bright joy over the animal, nature and human condition.The author bears witness in these poems and brief essays to irreverence for life as she has done - in a different writing style - in newspaper and magazine articles, other books and testimony before legislative bodies. She brings new vision to the commonplace. Controlled and compelling, she speaks the language of the heart, where most meaningful action begins.The book is divided into five sections: "The House of Life," "Sunlight Still in His Eyes," "The Quality of Mercy," "Joy to the World," and "The Ways of Love."

About the author

Ann Cottrell Free was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1916. A graduate of Barnard College, she became the first woman Washington correspondent for the New York Herald Tribune, Newsweek and the Chicago Sun, where she covered First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and wartime-Washington. After the war she served in China as a special correspondent for the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration and in Europe for the Marshall Plan. She later wrote for the North American Newspaper Alliance and was a contributing columnist to the Washington Post, the Washington Star, other newspapers and syndicates. An Albert Schweitzer Medalist, she was also the recipient of a variety of humanitarian and writing awards for her novel, Forever the Wild Mare, as well as her other animal writing. She initiated the establishment of the Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge and presented testimony on numerous animal protection issues to Congressional committees. She also authored Animals, Nature and Albert Schweitzer and Since Silent Spring: Our Debt to Albert Schweitzer and Rachel Carson. She received the Rachel Carson Legacy Award in 1988 and in 1996 was inducted into the Virginia Communications Hall of Fame. Her oral histories are in the collections of Columbia University and the National Press Club. In 2004 she died at the age of 88 in Washington D.C. A year later, the National Press Club Ann Cottrell Free Animal Reporting Award was established to inspire and encourage other journalists to follow in her footsteps. More information can be found at www.anncottrellfree.org