Hi, I’m Britny Cordera with NPR’s NextGenRadio in St. Louis. Urban farmer Mitchell Pearson provides nutritious fruits and vegetables to food insecure neighborhoods in North St. Louis. He’s also passionate about teaching young people how to farm sustainably. He worries that climate change is making it more difficult to grow culturally important crops like okra, tomatoes, and mustard greens. “The, you know, the crickets, they make the noises when the weather changes the real loud, but I’m watchi

Congregations in St. Louis are working with local scientists to monitor the air quality in communities affected by industrial pollution. Father Nick Winker works to set up an air pollution monitor at St. Ann Catholic Church along with Washington University in St. Louis intern David Yeom and Jay Turner Lab doctoral students Tyler Cargill and Li Zhiyao. (Photo by Beth Gutzler)

Water can conform to its container, or it can gather in force as whelming as a wave. What will you choose? If the planet is to heal, we must restore harmony—which cannot exist without collaboration. Growing up, I was my mom’s Barbie doll. In Omaha, Nebraska, I won a contest for the most beautiful baby three years in a row. She donned me with layers of dresses: a thin slip under a white tutu trimmed with sky blue fluff that peeked out beneath a shiny pink polyester dress.

Dellwood Recreation Center was the place to be for roller skaters on June 9. The weather, though unpredictable, wasn’t blazing hot like it is now. The smooth, concrete surface of the outdoor skate rink hummed as 80 or more skaters jammed to DJ Reala and DJ Dasho’s mixes of trap, R&B, gospel, and funk.

On the night of September 2, activists with Fandom Forward, A Tribe Called Geek, and Honor the Earth held a rally that mobilized 100 young adults — including me — to take action against the Line 3 Pipeline.

As an early-career environmental journalist, I guessed that objectivity was the most important goal in the field. But as a poet finishing up an MFA at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, this kind of writing doesn’t come naturally to me. Poetry requires that I use the first-person pronoun a lot, and when I do, I often get frustrated because I want to tell a narrative that means something to the collective “we.” Journalism challenges my comfort zone and urges me to become a more versatile wr