Sierra Magazine Debuts Redesign Amidst Organizational Transformation

Oakland, CA— As part of its 125-year journey, Sierra —the national magazine of Sierra Club, the most enduring and influential grassroots environmental organization in the United States—has unveiled a dynamic redesign. 

In addition to its fresh look, Sierra will now be published on a quarterly basis. The new Sierra features more experimental and personal writing, a recommitment to photo essays, and poetry. The new format aims to engage new audiences to communicate the complexity and urgency of the interconnected environmental crises facing our modern world. 

The revamp features: 

• A fluid mix of recurring sections and features that reflects the way most of us consume media in the internet age. 

• A Notes From Here & There section that recommits to storytelling from the front lines of environmental activism and the edges of outdoor recreation. 

• An expanded arts and letters section called Culture Desk that critiques how mass media and consumer culture intersect with environmental issues. 

• Findings, a robust science section that investigates our miraculous natural world as well as the latest technologies for addressing the climate crisis and the extinction emergency. 

• The Lookout, a return to the magazine’s Forestry Notes of the 1890s and the Washington Report of the1960s. This serves as a dashboard our activist member-readers can use to advance Sierra Club campaigns. 

• And for the first time in decades, poetry is returning to Sierra’s pages under the curation of poetry editor Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

See several iterations of Sierra over the years and read a note from Editor Jason Mark here.

A glimpse at Sierra Magazine over the years. Art by Rachel Griffiths.

Jason Mark, editor of Sierra, released the following statement: 

“The Sierra Club continues its organizational transformation that prioritizes a just, equitable, and sustainable future built on a foundation of racial, economic, and gender equity—where all people benefit from a healthy thriving planet and a direct connection to nature. 

“Faced with overlapping climate, biodiversity, and human rights crises, Sierra—the storytelling arm of the organization—is evolving to meet this moment. 

“We’ll keep searching for new ways to use words and images that spark a wonder for the natural world and fuel a passion for protecting it. We hope to experiment with original forms of 21st-century nature writing—blurring the lines between the wild and the human, celebrating nearby nature as much as remote wilderness, and revealing the intersections between social justice for people and ecological justice for the rest of life on Earth. We’ll hitch a joy for the planet and a love for human communities to the courage of those who act to safeguard both.”