By Jennifer Case
By Erin Wood
The Carework Project: Reckoning with Love, Labor, and the Living World is the third book by Conway resident and University of Central Arkansas creative writing professor Jennifer Case, released last month from Trinity University Press.
Combining elements of memoir, collage, interview, research, and cultural reflection, The Carework Project probes what care means in a time of climate crisis. Case shows how caregiving—often invisible, gendered, and undervalued—is central to survival. She examines how trauma and burnout affect our ability to connect, and how crucial conversations around care and caregiving are to larger discussions around climate, labor, justice, and self. She urges that healing can begin by envisioning a world where care is not a burden but a source of mutual renewal and belonging.
Case says the book is “less about hard-edged science and more about healing the inner wounds that cause a culture of out-of-control consumption.” Both her concepts and her lyric prose will necessitate reading with a pen for underlining, for there is much to consider long after the book is first read.
Case is also author of the essay collection We Are Animals: On the Nature and Politics of Motherhood, and a memoir, Sawbill: A Search for Place. Her work has appeared in journals such as Orion, North American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Michigan Quarterly Review. She is the recipient of a 2026 Catalyze Grant from the Mid-America Arts Alliance, among other prizes and scholarships. Find her at jenniferlcase.com.
Hot Springs native Erin Wood is a writer, editor, and publisher in Little Rock. She owns and runs etaliapress.com.
Wood is the author of “Women Make Arkansas: Conversations With 50 Creatives” (2019) and editor of and a contributor to “Scars: An Anthology” (2015).
{Additional book reviews by Erin Wood can be found on our website at TheSpringsMagazine.com/ARBooks.}
