Creeksong: One Woman Sings the Climate Blues is a 12-hour, unabridged memoir performed in Wendy Sarkissian’s own voice—a fierce, intimate elder voice that refuses to look away from ecological collapse or personal devastation. Over these hours, listeners travel with her from childhood trauma, betrayal, and professional burnout into a raw, solitary year (1991-92) in a tiny remnant Australian rainforest, where fear and climate grief slowly alchemise into courage, reciprocity with place, and a renewed vow to serve the Earth. 

Directed by Wendy’s partner, award-winning director, Christopher Baudat, the audiobook is crafted almost like music: dynamic, sonorous, and rhythmic, with vocal nuance and pacing that draw listeners into a numinous, living relationship with creek, forest, and sky.

This is not a neutral “reading” but a spiritual-ecological initiation in sound: a spirited elder singing her climate blues and inviting others to find their own song of resistance and reverence. Climate grief is treated here as a sane, soul-level response to a world in peril, not a pathology to be silenced, and listeners are accompanied through collapse, retreat, ordeal, and return to action. Creeksong weaves feminist insight, climate science, community activism, and bush-based spiritual practice into a single, embodied performance that can steady those who feel alone, terrified, or numb in the face of ecological disaster—and call them back into committed, joyful, grounded engagement.

Coached by expert colleagues in Post Hypnotic Press in Vancouver, Wendy and Christopher built an audio studio in his apartment and recorded the audiobook over several months in 2022 and 2023. They taught themselves all aspects of audiobook production. The audiobook has 400 pieces of music and 900 special effects, including original soundscapes from the Australian outback.

Core audiobook specs

Title: Creeksong: One Woman Sings the Climate Blues – A Memoir (unabridged audiobook).

Author and narrator: Written and narrated by Wendy Sarkissian. The voice is her own throughout.

Length: About 12 hours and 10 minutes of audio, in English.

Format: Distributed as a standard digital audiobook (e.g., Audible, Apple Books), aligned with the 548-page print and e-book text.

Content and themes in audio form

The audiobook traces Wendy’s story as an abused child, betrayed partner, and distressed professional who reaches a breaking point over looming ecological catastrophe, then undertakes a solitary year in an Australian rainforest that reorders her life. The narrative moves between suspenseful personal storytelling and climate science, weaving feminist, ecological, spiritual, and activist threads into a single performed memoir.

Key thematic features in audio:

• Climate grief and “climate blues”: her long-standing distress about climate breakdown and how it drives her to leave urban life in her 49th year.

• Solitary retreat and ecological learning: a year in rainforest country, confronting fear, lack of bush skills, and eventually discovering courage, creek-based “song,” and a sense of reciprocity with place.

• Activist and professional re-orientation: Wendy’s return to city life to pursue a PhD in environmental ethics and renewed community engagement, “singing” her Creeksong in service of the Earth.

Performance and production style

The audiobook is described as “dynamic” and “sonorous,” directed by award-winning director Christopher Baudat and voiced entirely by Wendy. This framing signals a performance that emphasizes vocal nuance, pacing, and sound design more than a typical straight read.

Direction: Baudat’s role suggests careful shaping of tone, rhythm, and emotional arcs across the 12 hours, aiming for a cinematic quality in sound.

Vocal qualities: Wendy’s expressive delivery invites the listener into an intimate “numinous world” rather than a detached reading.

Listening experience: The project is positioned as “an audiobook unlike any other” that foregrounds emotional intensity, reflection, and a sense of being guided through a spiritual-ecological initiation rather than merely hearing a life story.

Distinctive experiential features

Several features make the Creeksong audiobook stand out compared with many memoir recordings:

• Strong integration of inner work and outer crisis: the audio emphasizes both childhood trauma and the global climate emergency, presenting both as intertwined wounds and sources of healing.

• Elder voice and intergenerational focus: Wendy explicitly speaks as a “spirited elder,” offering her journey as guidance and encouragement to listeners of all ages facing ecological fear and grief.

• Blend of narrative, reflection, and “song”: while not a musical album, the language of “singing the climate blues” and “hear Wendy sing her Creeksong” signals a lyrical, rhythmic, almost sung quality in how the story is voiced and structured.