This special issue of Colloquy is devoted to the proceedings of last year’s Colloquy conference, “Be true to the earth” (March 31-April 1, 2005), which was the inaugural conference of the recently founded Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment (Australia-New Zealand). As the founding President of that Association, I was extremely grateful to Dimitris Vardoulakis and the rest of the Colloquy editorial team for offering to host our first major international gathering, and I am honoured to have the opportunity to guest edit the wonderful issue of the journal that has resulted from it, ably assisted by Peter Coleman, who led the conference organisation, Samantha Capon and Barbara Ghattas.