FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
powerHouse Books is pleased to announce the May 2011 release of
Eco Amazons: 20 Women Who Are Transforming the World
By Dorka Keehn
Photographs By Colin Finlay

It's a fact: individuals have the power to change the world. And in an age of rampant environmental devastation, nothing is as vital as saving our planet and the health of its inhabitants. Eco Amazons brings together, for the first time, American women leading the charge to create a sustainable future. They are individuals at the forefront of the global ecological movement, making a critical difference in all of our lives. Through intimate interviews conducted by journalist Dorka Keehn and arresting images by award-winning photographer Colin Finlay, Eco Amazons chronicles and illuminates the leading environmental issues of our time and shows how concern leads to passion, and how passion leads to action that can be emulated by all.

While many of the leaders of the modern environmental movement have consistently been women, most of their names, struggles, and successes have yet to achieve national recognition. A generation ago, conservation held the spotlight; but because of these women, the beam is now shining equally on health and urban issues like clean air and safe drinking water. As the movement has expanded, women continue to spearhead change in new areas of environmental focus such as art, design, economics, and food production, and are forging new sustainable relationships with the planet. What can we learn from their insights, worldviews, value systems, and leadership styles?

With a forward by Julia Butterfly Hill—the internationally known activist who lived in a redwood tree affectionately know as "Luna" for 738—days this seminal book brings to light the stories and lives of 20 American women who have developed innovative solutions for protecting the planet and its inhabitants. These eco-warriors include Majora Carter, who founded the environmental justice organization Sustainable South Bronx and one of the nation's first green-jobs training programs; Hunter Lovins, founder of Natural Capitalism Solutions and for more than 30 years a champion of sustainable development; Julia Bonds, a coal miner's daughter and the director of Coal River Mountain Watch in the Appalachian Mountains who is fighting the highly destructive mining practice known as "mountaintop removal"; and Alice Waters, the chef and owner of the award-wining restaurant Chez Panisse, who has championed farmer's markets and organic products, and who created the Edible Schoolyard curriculum.

For a preview of the book please visit: http://www.powerHouseBooks.com/ecoamazons.pdf

Dorka Keehn is a journalist and activist. A leader in the women's movement, she is a founder of Emerge America (emergeamerica.org), a premier training program for Democratic women planning to run for political office, and is a Commissioner on the San Francisco Commission on the Status of Women where she chairs the Justice & Courage Domestic Violence Project. Keehn also hosts the arts and culture Internet/radio program, Keehn on Art (keehnonart.com), and has produced several programs for television including the two-time Emmy-award-winning documentary, Of Civil Wrongs and Rights: The Fred Korematsu Story.

Colin Finlay's photographs have been featured in Vanity Fair, TIME, U.S. News and World Report, American Photo, and Photographic Magazine. He has published four previous photography books including Testify (Zuma Press, 2006) and Darfur: Twenty Years of War and Genocide in Sudan (powerHouse, 2007).

For a preview of the book please visit: http://www.powerHouseBooks.com/ecoamazons.pdf

High-res scans to your specification are available upon request; scanning from the book or lifting images from the mechanical file are strictly prohibited. Mandatory credit line: From Eco Amazons: 20 Women Who Are Transforming the World by Dorka Keehn, published by powerHouse Books.