J.D. Ho's Backyard Alchemy transforms the loss of climate stability, relationships, health, and ecological integrity into sites of repair and restoration. Whether about microforaging pennycress and sheep sorrel in the fields, picking pawpaws in the woods, or salvaging scrap metal by a degraded creek, these lyric essays delve into the personal and historical meanings of local ecologies. They explore locations from the Virginia woods to the Los Angeles River, from the Big Island of Hawai'i to Darwin's England and Guangdong Province, China, crouching down to look at the world from the point of view of a stinkbug, a crayfish, a tree of heaven, revealing the ways that empathy can connect us to even the smallest and most denigrated inhabitants of our planet.

J.D. HO was born by the sea, raised on a rock, went to Williams College with a bunch of hippies, schmoozed in Hollywood, drove to Austin, Texas for an MFA at University of Texas's Michener Center for Writers, and now freelances and lives among foxes and deer on a sliver of East Coast green. J.D.'s work has appeared in Georgia Review, Missouri Review, Ninth Letter, and other journals.

"Backyard Alchemy is a poetic diary revealing the writer's intimate relationship with the land they labor over, one handful of soil at a time. With a botanist's passion, they forage, prune, seed, and unearth truths and histories with long and tangled roots, each with their own ghosts clinging to them. J.D. Ho is writer as alchemist—taking the things we love to hate: rusted nails, stink bugs and invasive plants, and transforming them into a bold tapestry that is illuminating, soulful and ultimately hopeful." — Lori Weidenhammer, author of Victory Gardens for Bees

"Insects, metal, migration, longleaf pine, family, love. As I read J.D. Ho's deeply wise and deeply curious, multitudinous essays, I kept a basket of favorite sentences, insights, and moments: those that broke my heart open and those that stitched it back together, stronger. The basket was soon overflowing." — Michael Metivier, author of Glacial, Erratic

"J.D. Ho is a true forager. Eyes sharp, they hunt for seeds and sprouts of information. They browse the environment for those miniscule details that can be used to nourish. The result is a collection that moves fluidly from microcosm to macro-, exploring the inextricable connections between natural world and societal forces." — Jennifer Graham, author of The Fall of Iris Henley

"With a storyteller's cadence, a naturalist's eye for detail, and a historian's socio-cultural explication, J.D. Ho has compiled a remarkable set of poetic memories and sensory-rich observations. With writing that flows, seemingly effortlessly, between the grounded and the transcendent, they generously share their reflections in a volume to be lingered over and revisited." — Elissa Gershowitz, Editor in Chief, The Horn Book, Inc.