About Me
I am a literary nonfiction writer who focuses on natural history, ecology and the intersections of nature and culture. My poems, essays and articles have appeared in a wide variety of publications, including Utne Reader, Orion, Conservation, Places, and Arizona Highways. I am the coauthor of Valley of Grass: Tallgrass Prairie and Parkland of the Red River Region, winner of a Minnesota Book Award for Nature Writing. With Minnesota ecologist Chel Anderson, I coauthored North Shore: A Natural History of Minnesota’s Superior Coast. A selection of my natural history columns for the online publication Zygote Quarterly appeared in the 2017 book Science of Seeing. I am currently working on a new book that explores the ecology of grief and loss in the sky islands of southeastern Arizona.
Nature also is the focus of my work as an educator at Arizona State University. As the former codirector of InnovationSpace, a sustainable product-development program, I led the program’s biomimicry initiative, which introduced students to the use of biology as a means of sustainable innovation in design, business and engineering.
As the former assistant director of ASU’s Biomimicry Center, I also initiated several biomimicry-based projects including “Designed to Move: Seeds That Float, Fly or Hitchhike through the Desert Southwest,” an exhibition of macrophotography that explored the beauty and functional diversity of desert seed designs. I also cofounded NatureMaker, an active learning library where hands-on explorations of nature inspire sustainable innovation. The project won ASU’s 2021 President’s Award for Innovation. I am currently an Affiliate Global Futures Scholar at ASU’s Julie Ann Wrigley Global Futures Laboratory.
I divide my time between the Chiricahua Mountains of southeastern Arizona and South Mountain in the City of Phoenix, where I share my yard, and sometimes my house, with scorpions, southern house spiders, hummingbirds, nighthawks, coyotes, cactus wrens, screech owls and the occasional javelina.
Featured Awards
In 2017 I camped for the first time in a “forest” of Joshua trees. I couldn’t wait to return to the Mojave Desert to spend long, uninterrupted hours in their company again. I got my wish in 2020 when I was selected as one of two artists-in-residence in Joshua Tree National Park. Here is an essay I wrote during my stay. It profiles Juniper Harrower, an extraordinary artist and scientist who not only studied the ecology of these magnificent plants in the park but also relayed their stories in paintings and imaginative video animations.
Ellen Meloy is one of the premier voices of the deserts of the American Southwest. In 2014 I was honored to receive an annual writing award given in her name.
Joshua Tree National Park Artist-in-Residence
Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award
Andrews Forest Writing Residency
In summer 2017 I was awarded an Andrews Forest Writing Residency in the old-growth forests of Oregon’s Cascade Mountains. It was here that I met Rita Claremont, a biologist who has devoted her life to the conservation of the northern spotted owl. Read more here about Rita and the extraordinary animals she is working to protect.