Kristin Kaye didn’t set out to write a YA book, much less an award-winning YA book, but that’s exactly what happened. This week, the writer of Tree Dreams, one of Buzzfeed’s “5 Books to Read to Prep for Earth Day,” joins the GrottoPod to trace her unlikely path from avant-garde theater impresario to environmental activist and author, stopping off along the way to touch on eco-warriors, breaking our addiction to consumption, jobs that offer health benefits and the multi-dimensional world of women’s body-building. “The big question was: how do I write an internal conversation with a tree that sounds like a two-way conversation? How do you give language to a mostly mystical experience?”9:24: How Tree Dreams became a YA book, and then a curriculum.14:28: Where the idea to write Tree Dreams came from.28:18: Kristin’s life before she began writing fiction.43:48: Having an “environmental awakening.”58:48: Dividing your time between activism and writing.