Sign Here If You Exist and Other Essays

Finalist for the 2022 ASLE book award for creative writingSign Here If You Exist explores states of being and states of mind, from the existence of God to sense of place to adoptive motherhood. In it, Jill Sisson Quinn examines how these states both disorient and anchor us as she treks through forests, along shorelines and into lakes and rivers as well as through memories and into scientific literature.Each essay hinges on an unlikely pairing-parasitic wasps and the afterlife, or salamanders and parenthood-in which each element casts the other in unexpectedly rich light. Quinn joins the tradition of writers such as Annie Dillard, Scott Russell Sanders, and Eula Biss to deliver essays that radiate from the junction of science and imagination, observation and introspection, and research and reflection.