John Linstrom, photo courtesy Kate McKenna
Lin•strom, n.: in Swedish, a name evoking a brook or stream (strom) flowing through blue flax (or linseed, lin) blossoms; thus, a landscape marked by ongoing change shaping an old field, liquid movement inscribing tradition and feeding the roots of plants both horticultural (Linum usitatissimum, cultivated for food and fiber) and wild (Linum bienne, native to the Mediterranian and western Europe); thus, both rooted and searching, transient and local. Sometimes considered anachronistic.
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John Linstrom is a writer, editor, museum professional, and scholar. He grew up in South Haven, Michigan, the hometown of the great Progressive Era horticulturist and ecospheric philosopher Liberty Hyde Bailey. After attending Valparaiso University and its interdisciplinary honors college, Christ College, to earn a BA in English and Humanities, John moved to Iowa for an MFA in Creative Writing and Environment at Iowa State University. He began researching Liberty Hyde Bailey's life and work while a student and composition instructor at Iowa State, at which time he also started working at Bailey's childhood home, now the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum, during the summers, quickly rising from intern, to curator, and finally to executive director of the small nonprofit museum. His literary nonfiction book manuscript explores the layers of history in that small town and the marginal landscape that surrounds it by delving into the experiences of his and Bailey's lives and the hundred-thirty years that separate them.
In 2014, John left the Bailey Museum to pursue a PhD in English and American Literature at New York University, which he received in 2021. In 2020/2021, he was an NYU Public Humanities Fellow at the Museum of the City of New York, followed by a year as a Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow in English at New York University. He is now a Mellon Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Climate and Inequality at The Climate Museum in New York City. He currently lives in Queens with his wife and baby daughter.
John has several book projects underway. His debut poetry collection, To Leave for Our Own Country, is forthcoming from Black Lawrence Press in April 2024. The book explores questions of place, identity, labor, and family, all against the backdrop of the climate crisis and the linked eco-social phenomenon of the American small-town diaspora. His scholarly manuscript, Demolish the Fence: Ecospheric Writing and Interspecies Fieldwork from the Margins of the Progressive Era, integrates critical autoethnography and literary scholarship to explore the ecospheric writing that emerges from the interspecies fieldwork practices of a diverse set of writers during the U.S. Progressive Era (1890-1929), and it investigates the ways in which the engaged work of these marginalized thinkers disrupts the narratives of western scientism and might inform current discourses surrounding climate change in the Anthropocene. Finally, Mouth of Sun is a research-based, lyrical nonfiction manuscript about Liberty Hyde Bailey, the small hometown in Michigan that he and John shared 130 years apart, and the ecospheric ramifications of the American small-town diaspora.
As the series editor of The Liberty Hyde Bailey Library from Comstock Publishing Associates of Cornell University Press, John built and maintains The Liberty Hyde Bailey Project, an online resource hub related to that series and to Bailey studies generally. His editions of Bailey's works include The Nature-Study Idea and Related Writings (Cornell UP, forthcoming), The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion (coedited; Cornell UP, 2019), and The Holy Earth (Counterpoint, 2015; foreword by Wendell Berry).
John's poems have recently appeared widely in journals such as Northwest Review, The Christian Century, North American Review, The New Criterion, and Atlanta Review; his nonfiction has appeared in The Antioch Review, Newfound, and Prairie Gold: An Anthology of the American Heartland; and his scholarship has recently appeared in The Sower and the Seer: Perspectives on the Intellectual History of the American Midwest (Wisconsin Historical Society, 2021).
Linstrom impersonates Bailey at the Liberty Hyde Bailey Outdoor Learning Center, North Shore Elementary School; photo courtesy Rebecca Linstrom
While a postdoc at NYU, John taught "Introduction to Literary Studies," "Major Texts in Critical Theory," and the "Creative Writing Capstone in Fiction" in the English Department at NYU. Previously, he taught courses in creative writing and (eco-)composition while an MFA student at Iowa State, he taught a graduate course in research writing and methodology at his undergraduate alma mater in 2014, he has been TA for Core and English undergraduate coursework at New York University, and in the summer of 2018 he taught a course on "Literature and Environment: Modern American Literature and Questions of Ecology" at NYU. He has also done educational work with kids aged 6-11 through the Liberty Hyde Bailey Museum's summer program "Bailey's Budding Naturalists" and through the museum's other educational outreach efforts, including support of the Liberty Hyde Bailey Outdoor Learning Center at North Shore Elementary School, which was begun in 2010 by his inspirational mother and fourth-grade teacher Rebecca Linstrom. He taught outdoor poetry writing to Girl Scouts at the Comstock Girl Scout Camp while there as the Bailiwick Writer in Residence sponsored by AgArts. He led virtual field trips with K-12 students in New York City for the Museum of the City of New York on topics ranging from the history of graffiti art in New York City to the Movement for Black Lives today.
A list of John's publications can be found here, information about The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion here and The Holy Earth here, and audio and other performance of his work here. John has blogged on Medium. For a full academic profile, please refer to his CV. You can also view his LinkedIn profile and follow him on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook, if you dare. Please enjoy exploring this site, and let John know what you think by contacting him directly, here.
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Liberty Hyde Bailey, Jr. (1858-1954) was an influential agrarian philosopher, advocate of "nature-study" in primary schools, "Father of Modern Horticulture," bestselling author of over 70 books and editor of some 140 more, Chair of Theodore Roosevelt's national Commission on Country Life, pioneering plant explorer and photographer, and the revered founding Dean of the New York State College of Agriculture at Cornell University. His writings have influenced writers as diverse and influential as Marianne Moore, Aldo Leopold, Pearl Buck, and Wendell Berry. You can read a thumbnail sketch of his fascinating life story, which John wrote for the Bailey Museum, here, or check out the 1956 biography by Philip Dorf, Liberty Hyde Bailey: An Informal Biography, for a fuller profile.