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Going to the Moon

Cover of Going to the Moon by Sally Ashton. Cover is black. At the top of the cover the word Practices is centered in a handwritten pale green script.

Practices

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Book

Pages: 148

Illustrations: 10 illustrations

Release Date: July 14, 2026

Author: Sally Ashton

In 2022, poet Sally Ashton learned that one of her poems would be included in a time capsule to be sent to the Moon via Astrobotic’s 2024 Griffin/VIPER as part of the Lunar Codex project. For her, this event seemed like the high point in a life spent chasing the Moon, from a childhood inspired by the space race of the 1960s to an adulthood spent in contemplation and conversation with the sky. In Going to the Moon, Ashton marvels at the Moon’s powerful influence since the dawn of humanity—how we have, in our own ways, gone to the Moon, and what we have found. Contemplating lunar settlement in the light of history, culture, the rise of the space industry, and geopolitical conflict, Ashton shares her sense of wonder at the simple beauty of our unchanged Moon and reveals what is at stake in our contemporary attempts to colonize it.

Praise

“When in 1972 my mum obtained photographs and other memorabilia straight from NASA because her four-year-old son was fascinated by the Moon, we didn’t know that I would be endorsing this book. But here I am: the Eagle has landed. As Sally Ashton tells the reader in luminous, engaging prose, anyone who has felt a tide or looked into the sky has been to the Moon. It’s magical and it’s real. This is a wonderful book about all that.” - Timothy Morton, Rita Shea Guffey Chair of English at Rice University.

“Going to the Moon looks bravely and intimately at the ironies of our contemporary relationship to Earth’s only satellite. Sally Ashton has an uncommon story to tell about her own relationship to the moon, even as her lyrical prose zooms in on a surpassingly universal human experience: gazing up at that ‘crisp circumference’ in the sky we all share.” - Erika Howsare, author of The Age of Deer: Trouble and Kinship with Our Wild Neighbors

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Sally Ashton is Lecturer Emerita of English at San José State University. She is the author of several poetry books, including Listening to Mars and The Behaviour of Clocks.

Table Of Contents

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1. “Fly Me to the Moon”  1
2. “Moon River”  10
3. “In the Beginning . . .”  16
4. “Mr. Moonlight!”  26
5. “That’s Amoré”  39
6. “What They Should Have Sent”  55
7. Countdown  68
8. “The Moon Belongs to Everyone”  89
9. “Goodnight Moon”  100
10. “Everyone’s Gone to the Moon”  110
Afterwards Afterword  123
Acknowledgments  129
Going for More . . . Moon!  131
Notes  133

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Sales/Territorial Rights: World

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Additional Information

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Related Links Paper ISBN: 978-1-4780-3395-0 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-4780-3338-7 / eISBN: 978-1-4780-6243-1 /