Tagged herbalism

Microcosm launches Yard Dragon Books imprint

Microcosm Publishing is founding a new imprint, Yard Dragon Books, focused on titles about plants and herbalism. Acquisitions for the imprint will be led by editor, herbalist, and artist Alexis Orgera

Orgera (she/they) is the author of the lyric memoir Head Case: My Father, Alzheimer’s & Other Brainstorms (Kore Press, 2021), as well as poetry books How Like Foreign Objects and Dust Jacket, and Agatha (forthcoming) from Jackleg Press. She holds degrees in British & American literature from New College of Florida (before New College was taken over by DeSantis and his goons) and poetry from Emerson College. Orgera is an editor, has taught college writing, co-founded and edited Penny Candy Books, and is was recently executive director of Greensboro Bound literary festival. A student and practitioner of herbal medicine and permaculture in North Carolina’s piedmont, Orgera is currently apprentice to the land on a quarter-acre plot in an urban flood zone and uses ecology, permaculture design principles, regenerative practices, eco-philosophy, ethnobotany, the history of medicine and healing, and herbal studies in both her writing and gardening life. 

Alexis Orgera

Of the new imprint, Orgera writes, “I’m a better person because of plants. Herbalism and permaculture have taught me how better to listen to the world around me and to deeply respect balance—in myself, in nature, and in the relationship between people and our landscape. To be able to share the green life with readers, combining my passion for plants with my vocation of book-making and editing, is really a dream come true, and doing so with Microcosm—a publisher that really cares about its readers—is even better.”

More information on submitting work to the imprint can be found here.

Happy 420 Highlights

Whether you’re a seasoned stoner or newly cannabis-curious, we’re happy to help you celebrate this high holiday for all who appreciate the many gifts of Mary Jane. 

Whatever way you grind, roll, vape, bake, or smoke it, cannabis is a multifaceted—and increasingly de-stigmatized—substance with a remarkable array of applications. To mark the weed-based holiday touted (and toasted) around the world, here’s a collection of titles that showcase this special plant and how to use it.

Feminist Weed Farmer by Madrone Stewart

Weed is a powerful medicine, and growing your own is as empowering as it gets. Experienced Humboldt farmer Madrone Stewart shares her hard-won knowledge gained from years of growing cannabis, Zen meditation, and surviving as a woman in a male-dominated industry. She walks you through the big picture and details of growing six backyard plants, from selecting seeds to harvesting and processing. Humorous, sage, and with a big heart, each chapter is infused with what she’s learned about equalizing the weed industry, applying mindfulness to pest management, and the importance of owning each step of the process. If you’ve ever wanted to grow your own pot or make hash or kief at home, this book is your wise guide.

High on Design: The New Cannabis Culture by Tarditi Santiago Rodriguez

No longer relegated to back-alley dealings, the world of cannabis has evolved into a snazzy, appealing business. With striking imagery, high-art photography, and thoughful writing, this book highlights the creators, entrepreneurs, brands, consumers, and designs that have made cannabis what it is today. While the focus is on new trends in the cannabis as a revolutionized industry, High on Design also provides a holistic view of cannabis culture by examining crime, addiction, science, hemp in clothing, and marketing cannabis as a recreational or a medical product. All hail the new en vogue herb!

The CBD Solution: Sex – How Cannabis, CBD, and Other Plant Allies Can Change Your Everyday Life by Merry Jane

One of the most asked topic concerning CBD is how it can help improve your sex life. In this all-encompassing, no-hold-barred exploration, you will find a range of recipes, bedroom activities, and tricks for enhancing your sexual experience. With explanations on how cannabis can help increase pleasure and intimacy, you will learn the how-to on everything from dirty talk to erotic massage. For anyone interested in either solo or partnered sex exploration, you are sure to learn something to help cultivate a satisfying sex life.

 Ganja Bruja #1 by Cynthia Marts

There’s more to the high life than good kush. Get educated and inspired to live your best smoker life with this zine that includes: Weed 101!—a simple introduction to types of cannabis and what makes it work, from cannabinoids to terpenes to the “entourage effect”; Why I Smoke Weed—explorations of the question so many non-tokers ask with honesty and no judgement; Notes on Race and Stigma—including why the term “marijuana” should probably be avoided (hint: its racist origins!); Tips and Tricks—from how to make a pipe out of a strawberry to the easiest cannabutter recipe around, and a bit more.

Growing Weed in the Garden: A No-Fuss, Seed-to-Stash Guide to Outdoor Cannabis Cultivation by Johanna Silver and Rachel Weill

As much an art book as a how-to guide, this gorgeously photographed book walks you through the hows, whys, whens, and wheres of growing your own pot in places where it’s legal to do so. It doesn’t have to be terribly complicated, and Johanna offers the basics you need, from choosing and starting seeds and clones through planting, cultivating, harvesting, drying, curing, and trimming, and what to do with the finished product. The beautiful pictures throughout illustrate every stage of the process, as well as introducing you to a variety of cannabis growers and their gardens.

The Stoner Babes Coloring Book
by Katie Guinn

This meditative, art-filled adult coloring book is inspired by the beauty of women and gender fluid people who savor the qualities of the cannabis plant. They are empowered, intelligent, motivated humans who pay no mind to judgment, for they’re making their mark in this world no matter their color, shape, size, age, or gender. You’ll enjoy coloring these highly detailed and varied pages, with tattoos, patterned garb, shape-filled backgrounds, marijuana bouquets, and gorgeous faces. While you color, partake in the transcendental qualities of weed and contemplate what empowerment means to you.

Shop the list for more 420 friendly material. Stay safe and have fun with the sweet leaf. Better yet: score the Your Best High Life Starter Pack for 50% off and share spare copies with your community!

Spooky pink and yellow text over black and gray industrial background.

Radical Care for Physical and Mental Health

In a world of systems that aim to keep us feeling helpless, sick, and disconnected from our bodies and emotions, it’s crucial to learn how to care for ourselves—and each other. From reproductive freedom to recruiting herbal allies, from supporting your own mental health to offering support to loved ones, life is full of opportunities to take back our agency and see ourselves as collaborators in healing.

To celebrate the release of new zine How to Get Your Periodhere’s a collection of works that embrace a radical understanding of “self care” as an empowering ethic for healthier individuals and communities.

How to Get Your Period, by Anonymous Healthcare Worker 

In 1971, as part of their work with their feminist reproductive collective, Lorraine Rothman and Carol Downer invented menstrual extraction (ME), a suction process to pass the entire period all at once, which has the side effect of ending any undetected early pregnancy. An underground network of providers has kept ME alive ever since, and now, in a post-Roe era, the demand is surging. Written by an anonymous medical professional, this book provides a short history of ME and detailed instructions and diagrams explaining how to safely and effectively perform a manual exam, use a speculum, assemble a Del-Em kit, and complete a menstrual extraction procedure. You’ll also learn when not to perform ME and find an overview of other safe and effective options for bringing about menstruation or ending a pregnancy in the first trimester. In addition to heralding the incredible discovery of these historical heroes and affirming the need for abortion rights, this book offers menstrual extraction as a method to understand and protect our own bodies, choices, and reproductive rights even as they are under attack.

Alive With Vigor! Surviving Your Adventurous Lifestyle, edited by Robert Earl Sutter III

Alive With Vigor! compiles stories of surviving—and thriving—from a wide spectrum of contributors. Deeply personal essays recount matters of preventative health care, the hard decisions we each have to make, Do It Yourself health care, and how to deal with extracting health care from government/corporate health care systems. Alive With Vigor! has a special focus on queer, youth, and transgender people, recognizing that everyone has different health care needs. Finally a how to book where you can put the advice directly to use in your life!

Reclaiming Our Ancient Wisdom: Herbal Abortion Procedure and Practice for Midwives and Herbalists, by Catherine Marie Jeunet 

A guide for practiced herbalists and midwives to better serve their communities with herbal abortion options. Beautifully illustrated with botanical drawings from Gerard’s Herbal and other early texts. The time is now for us to learn from forgotten knowledge and keep ourselves and the people around us healthy and fully in charge of their own reproductive health and rights. 

Stressed & Overwhelmed: Good Habits for the Exhausted Overachiever,
by Elly Blue

If you’re the sort of person who takes on every project and responsibility until suddenly it’s one thing too many and you get completely burnt out and drop everything and start the cycle again from scratch … this zine is for you. Includes hard-won pointers on how to train yourself to have more sustainable work habits (using tricks from dog training!), shore up your professional boundaries, and get more organized so you can have a better handle on all the things you are very likely to continue taking on. Stress and overwhelm are tough to live with every day, and the go-getters of the world could use to take better care of ourselves and have more fun.

Hot Pants: Do It Yourself Gynecology, by Isabelle Gauthier & Lisa Vinebaum

A thorough and classic examination on tried and true herbal treatments for common gynecological problems, as well as great basic sexual health info for anyone with a uterus. It begins, “Patriarchy sucks. It’s robbed us of our autonomy and much of our history. We believe it’s integral for women to be aware an in control of our own bodies.” Diagrams and herbal remedies teach you how to diagnose and heal many basic problems from bladder infections to inducing your period to ease cramps to even dealing with pregnancy. Learn herbal remedies to ease every stage of the menstrual cycle. There’s references to further reading, descriptions of herbs, and even a section on aphrodisiacs. The sections include: Body Mapping (in brief), About Menstruation, Love in the Age of Aids, 35 years of fertility, STDs and Other Aliens, The Ovaries and the Uterus, Aphrodisiacs, How to Prepare and Use Herbs, Picking Your Own Herbs, Herbal Properties and Dosages, Interesting Reading, Useful Addresses. This book deserves to sit next to your copy of Our Bodies, Our Selves.

Support: Feminist Relationship Tools to Heal Yourself and End Rape Culture, by Cindy Crabb

Support encourages everyone to take a step back, listen, think, and talk about sex, consent, violence, and abuse. If you or someone you know have ever been assaulted or victimized, how to be an ally can be confusing. These words and the connection they offer can help. With ideas and encouragement to help yourself and others cope with, prevent, and end sexual violence and abuse, this collection of personal experiences, advice, guest articles, and comic excerpts wants to help.

Self-Compassion: Be Kind to Yourself Instead of Striving for Bullshit “Self-Esteem,” by Dr. Faith G. Harper

For decades, the U.S. has been obsessed with “self-esteem” or rather with our lack of it. But self-esteem isn’t actually that great, and getting all puffed up about yourself isn’t exactly a recipe for the good life. How about self-compassion instead? Bestseller Dr. Faith explains the difference between the two and offers some helpful exercises in developing more compassion for yourself. It’s actually very different, she explains, than letting yourself off the hook for your bullshit. It’s more helpful to accept that you’re human so that you can learn and grow rather than push aside your problems or wallow in your mistakes. Also, kindness to yourself helps you be more kind to other people as well. Everyone wins!


Fireweed #1: A Zine of Grassroots Radical Herbalism and Wild Foods Connecting With Kids and Family Life, by Jess Krueger 

Fireweed, as the full title implies, is all about introducing your kids to plants. It’s about teaching young children the joy of gathering edibles, and making them into candies, teas, jellies, or even medicines. There’s tips for going on plant walks, and suggestions for good introductory plants like ginger, mint, and marshmallow. There are recipes for prickly pear crisp, catnip tea, and simple fermented herbal infusions. The authors conduct a couple interviews with parents about their experiences sharing plants with their children. This zine is really inspiring.  

Self As Other: Reflections on Self-Care, by  Corina Dross &  CrimethInc

In activist circles and elsewhere, it has become commonplace to speak of self-care, taking for granted that the meaning of this expression is self-evident. But “self” and “care” are not static or monolithic; nor is “health.” How has this discourse been colonized by capitalist values? How could we expand our notion of care to encompass a transformative practice?

Following “For All We Care,” analyzing the contradictory currents within the category of care, Crimethinc presents “Self as Other,” combining that text with three more essays in which individuals recount their personal struggles with the concept and practice of care.

Shop the list for even more of our radical self-care titles, or check out some packs. Keep taking care of each other!