“The Time of the Snails” was honored as the second place winner within Changing Skies: Writing through the Climate Crisis 2024 Prose Contest, which was sponsored by the Nature Conservancy in Colorado.
As Editor-in-Chief Cade Yoshioka notes in his introduction to the essay,
We are proud to present ‘The Time of the Snails’ by Megan Muthupandiyan as our second-place pick in the Changing Skies Prose Contest. Muthupandiyan’s piece considers the behaviors of European garden snails in Fisterra. Through this examination, an engrossing metaphor for taking life slowly as a conservational practice emerges. I was immersed in the landscape of Fisterra and felt an appreciation for poppies, wheat, and snails while reading this piece. Even in the face of slow progress of conservation efforts, ‘The Time of the Snails’ reminds us to live slowly.
Volume III of Changing Skies: Writing through the Climate Crisis, can be found here.