An essayist and reporter, I write at the intersection of ecology, history, spirituality, and culture. My essays and articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Orion, Literary Hub, Lapham’s Quarterly, Oxford American, The Bitter Southerner, Creative Nonfiction, Terrain.org, Virginia Quarterly Review, In These Times, The Utne Reader, Sierra , and at the On Being radio program blog. They have been included in The Best American Science and Nature Writing and listed as notable in The Best American Travel Writing . I am a recipient of the Middlebury Fellowship in Environmental Journalism and have been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize. My first nonfiction book, This Resounding World: A Field Guide to Listening , has received the Robert B. Silvers Foundation Grant for Works in Progress.
I am also a poet. My poems have appeared in The Southern Humanities Review and been anthologized in A Literary Field Guide to Southern Appalachia . My first book of poems, The Way the Moon, is out now at Mercer University Press. It has been nominated for the Weatherford Award.
In addition to writing, I am an educator, a forager, an herbalist, and a naturalist. I earned a Southern Appalachian naturalist certificate at the Great Smoky Mountains Institute. Originally from East Tennessee, I have spent most of my life in Southern and Central Appalachia and am currently based in the Georgia Piedmont.
I have chosen to support Rural Organizing and Resilience (R.O.A.R.), Tri-Cities Mutual Aid, and Holler2Holler, as well as Mergoat Magazine for this fundraiser. I have been moved by the thought, vision, and attention with which Mergoat has met this moment, and I am passionate about supporting meaningful journalism in our region as we move deeper into a challenging future. Mergoat Magazine covers Southern Appalachian ecologies on the cusp of catastrophe and futurity. Mergoat has generously partnered with me to create graphics and promote the event so we can raise as much as possible for the mutual aid organizations that are working to help the people of Southern Appalachia. Thank you all for supporting these causes!