Charlene Spretnak is the author of nine books on cultural history, social criticism (including feminism and Green politics), and religion and spirituality, several of which proposed a "map of the terrain" of emergent movements and expanded new ways of thinking. In recent decades she has explored societal implications of the discoveries in human biology showing that humans are far more dynamically interrelated with other people and with nature than modern medicine, education, and other fields imagined. Thus a relational re-design of many fields and ways of doing things is underway. In a sense, all her books have been concerned with dynamic interrelatedness. Her first book, Lost Goddesses of Early Greece (1978) was an exploration of the pre-Olympian mythology of indigenous Greece and its embeddedness in nature. Her book Green Politics was a major catalyst for the formation of the U.S. Green Party movement, which she and others cofounded in 1984. She is also a cofounder of two branches of the feminist movement: the women's spirituality movement and ecofeminism. Her book The Resurgence of the Real was named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the Best Books of 1997. In 2006 Charlene Spretnak was named by the British government's Environment Department as one of the "100 Eco-Heroes of All Time." In 2012 she received the Demeter Award for lifetime achievement as "one of the premier visionary feminist thinkers of our time" from the Association for the Study of Women and Mythology. She is a professor emerita in philosophy and religion.

 
In addition to many articles, op-ed pieces, and reviews, she has written the following books:

The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art: Art History Reconsidered, 1800 to the Present (2014)
Relational Reality: New Discoveries of Interrelatedness That Are Transforming the Modern World (2011)
Missing Mary: The Queen of Heaven and Her ReEmergence in the Modern Church (2004)
The Resurgence of the Real: Body, Nature, and Place in a Hypermodern World (1997)
States of Grace: The Recovery of Meaning the Postmodern Age (1991)
The Spiritual Dimension of Green Politics (1986)
Green Politics: The Global Promise (principle coauthor, 1984)
The Politics of Women's Spirituality: Essays on the Rise of Spiritual Power within the Feminist Movement (editor, 1982)
Lost Goddesses of Early Greece: A Collection of Pre-Hellenic Myths (1978)

 

Charlene Spretnak is represented by the literary agent Bonnie Nadell, Hill Nadell Literary Agency, Los Angeles, California.

 

Her professional archives have been placed with Smith College.

 

Charlene Spretnak's most recent article is "Goddess Time," Critics Page, The Brooklyn Rail: Critical Perspectives in Art, Politics, and Culture, February 2025. [See the section on Articles for the link.]