Barbara Drake-Vera
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barbaradrakevera.bsky.social
Barbara Drake-Vera
@barbaradrakevera.bsky.social
Writer, feminist, glacier-lover, cat-snuggler. Author, MELTED AWAY: A Memoir of Climate Change & Caregiving in Peru (LSU Press, 2024), Florida Book Award winner, finalist, Sarton Women's Book Award in Memoir
Pinned
Grateful to the Key West Literary Seminar for hosting me as their June writer in residence for my novel in progress. What a gift! (View from my KW studio)
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
Next in the Recovered Books series from @bhousepress.bsky.social: Makeshift, Sarah Campion's 1940 novel about the journey of Charlotte Herz, a German Jewish woman, from 1919 through the Weimar republic, the rise of the Nazis, and her journey in search of a new home.
November 18, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
Josephine Johnson wrote Seven Houses: a Memoir of Time and Places (1973) when she was in her sixties. It’s a memoir constructed around the framework of the seven houses in which she had spent most of her life to that point. (Not all innovation in the memoir is recent.)

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November 18, 2025 at 2:00 PM
My accomplishment this week has been not dying in the heat dome.
August 1, 2025 at 11:38 PM
Grateful to the Key West Literary Seminar for hosting me as their June writer in residence for my novel in progress. What a gift! (View from my KW studio)
July 26, 2025 at 1:05 AM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
H. L. Davis's Winds of Morning (1952) is a western in the same sense that Norman Maclean's A River Runs Through It is a western: yes, there are cows and cowboys in Davis's book, but fundamentally, it's about how people come to ways of living in a land so much bigger than us.

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July 24, 2025 at 1:00 PM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
Back in 2021, I read a 1966 novel about a young woman on a remote ranch in Nevada that had never been published in the US. Luckily, I tracked down its author, Joaquina Howles, and arrange to republish No More Giants with @bhousepress.bsky.social before she died last year.

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July 1, 2025 at 1:00 PM
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A long and -- at times -- brutal week. But we continue to fight for democracy with hope and determination. Thank you to everyone who has offered kind words of support on this journey. More soon. Goodnight.😴
June 28, 2025 at 1:05 AM
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My interview earlier this evening on #BBC #WorldNewsAmerica about the closing window for averting dangerous planetary warming: www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7DU...
Michael Mann on BBC World News America Discussing Closing Window for Limiting Warming Below 1.5C
YouTube video by Michael Mann
www.youtube.com
June 20, 2025 at 12:18 AM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
A milestone: the first electric aircraft has landed at JFK.

"...the flight from the airport in East Hampton to New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport took 45 minutes with a pilot and four people" and cost ... $8 worth of electricity.
First electric aircraft lands at JFK — General Aviation News
According to Beta Technology officials, the ALIA can fly 250 nautical miles on a single charge. He told reporters from Reuters that it cost just $8 to power the 45-minute flight.
generalaviationnews.com
June 10, 2025 at 8:31 PM
My residency workspace at the Key West Literary Seminar. So grateful for this opportunity.
June 10, 2025 at 1:19 AM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
'Rising Tides' by contemporary US painter Samantha French #WomensArt
June 8, 2025 at 2:41 PM
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A plague a’ both houses!
June 5, 2025 at 9:53 PM
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"The first step in liquidating a people is to erase its memory. Destroy its books, its culture, its history. Then have someone write new books, manufacture a new culture, invent a new history. Before long, that nation will forget what it is and what it was."
- Milan Kundera
March 21, 2025 at 8:04 PM
Entrance to my residency cottage in Key West, with the generous support of the Key West Literary Seminar. So grateful for the opportunity.
June 4, 2025 at 4:39 PM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
A Florida weatherman telling his viewers he can no longer be confident in his forecasts due to cuts to atmospheric science is the kind of resistance content I’m here for.

Kudos, Sir.🌦️
June 3, 2025 at 10:00 PM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
Remembering Marilyn Monroe on her birthday 🎂
📷 Ed Feingersh, 1955

“Her fame increases, & as it does so we see how far she depended on, and excelled in, photographs - not movies. She is funnier in stills, sexier, more mysterious & protected against being. ”
- David Thomson
June 1, 2025 at 7:11 PM
Feeling this
"let copilot help you draft"
"can gemini write that for you"

I have now taken the only reasonable course of action in the circumstances
May 31, 2025 at 2:44 PM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
Climate memoirs are special. They’re how my storytelling journey began. @barbaradrakevera.bsky.social was the first writer to ask me for an endorsement. Melt ❤️ Literally 😭

Barbara’s story centers her Peruvian family & her time with an Andean glacier. I so enjoyed returning there through her words.
May 30, 2025 at 1:19 PM
Thank you, Brianna, for featuring MELTED AWAY as this month's climate read. So honored!
MELTED AWAY is this month’s climate story. Thanks @barbaradrakevera.bsky.social for your memoir of climate change and caregiving in Peru ❤️📖

Each month of 2025, I’m gabbing about a climate book. We desperately need good climate stories. I’m happy to spread the word about ones that speak to me!
May 30, 2025 at 3:24 PM
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Remembering Rachel Carson on her birthday 🎂
📷 Alfred Eisenstaedt for Life magazine, 1962

That was the year Carson published her classic book Silent Spring
May 27, 2025 at 3:49 PM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
ACOG is deeply disappointed by HHS’s move to drop COVID-19 vaccine recommendations in pregnancy. The science is clear: COVID-19 remains dangerous in pregnancy and vaccination protects both patients and newborns. The vaccine is safe and protects families. Read our full statement: buff.ly/OGue7sO
May 27, 2025 at 6:34 PM
Accurate
May 27, 2025 at 8:58 PM
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This Memorial Day weekend, the best way to honor the soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice is to honor and protect the freedoms and the democracy they died for.
May 25, 2025 at 3:01 PM
Reposted by Barbara Drake-Vera
Today is #WorldDraculaDay because Bram Stoker's classic novel was first published #onthisday in 1897. It's also worth remembering that if Stoker hadn't come across the name Dracula in a book while researching in a LIBRARY the main character was going to be called Count Wampyr. 🧛‍♂️
May 26, 2025 at 11:27 AM