Environmental Writing: Non-fiction & Fiction
Fiction was my first reading love. Opening a novel was always an adventure, a way of being someone else somewhere else. I still read a lot of fiction, but my interest in nature, wildlife and our interactions with and attitudes towards the physical environment has led me to nonfiction.
Below is a list of books that study or reflect on nature, wildlife and wilderness, as well as related writings about environmental literature, rural travel, urban design and sustainable living. I also include some novels which touch on these themes and topics. These are books that I have read and would recommend because they are engaging, educational, inspiring and/or thought-provoking. There are classics of environmental writing, old and new, that I haven’t listed. This is most likely because I haven’t read them yet.
Jennifer Ackerman – Notes from the Shore
Joseph Barbato & Lisa Weinerman (eds) – Heart of the Land: Essays on Last Great Places
Patrick Barkham – The Butterfly Isles – A Summer in Search of Our Emperors and Admirals
Rick Bass – Brown Dog of the Yaak: Essays on Art and Activism
Rick Bass – The Book of Yaak
Henry Beston – The Outermost House: A year of life on the great beach of Cape Cod
Azby Brown – Just Enough: Lessons in Living Green from Traditional Japan
Florence Caplow & Susan A. Cohen (eds.) – wildbranch: An Anthology of Nature, Environmental, and Place-based Writing
Rachel Carson – The Edge of the Sea
Mary Clearman Blew – Bone Deep in Landscape: Writing, Reading and Place
Andy Couturier – The Abundance of Less: Lessons in Simple Living from Rural Japan
Linda Cracknell – A Wilder Vein
William Cronon – Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the human place in nature
Jodi Daynard – The Place Within: Portraits of the American Landscape by Contemporary Writers
Kathleen Dean Moore – Holdfast: At Home in the Natural World
Roger Deakin – Waterlog: A Swimmer’s Journey through Britain
Trudy Dittmar – Fauna and Flora, Earth and Sky – Brushes with Nature’s Wisdom
Gretel Ehrlich – The Solace of Open Spaces
Loren Eiseley – The Immense Journey
Robert Finch & John Elder – The Norton Book of Nature Writing [a great and broad anthology]
Alyss Fowler – Hidden Nature: A Voyage of Discovery
David Gessner – All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, William Stegner and the American West
David Gessner – My Green Manifesto: Down the Charles River in Pursuit of a New Environmentalism
David Gessner – Return of the Osprey: A Season of Flight and Wonder
David Gessner – Sick of Nature
David Gessner – The Tarball Chronicles: A Journey beyond the oiled pelican and into the heart of the Gulf Oil Spill
Bob Gilbert – Ghost Trees – Nature and People in a London Parish
Jay Griffiths – Wild: An Elemental Journey
Daniel Halpern & Dan Frank (eds.) – The Nature Reader
Susan Hand Shetterly – Settled in the Wild: Notes from the Edge of Town
Linda Hasselstrom – Land Circle: writings collected from the land
Ann Haymond Zwinger – Shaped by Wind and Water: Reflections of a Naturalist
Ann Haymond Zwinger – The Near Sighted Naturalist
Edward Hoagland – Notes from the century before; A Journal from British Columbia
Alexandra Horowitz – On Looking: Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes (also published as ‘On Looking: About Everything there is to see’)
Sue Hubbell – A Country Year: Living the Questions
Kathleen Jamie – Findings
Kathleen Jamie – Sightlines
Barbara Kingsolver – Hide Tide in Tucson: Essays from Now or Never
Barbara Kingsolver – Small Wonder
William Kittredge – Taking Care: thoughts on storytelling and belief
William Least Heat-Moon – Blue Highways: A Journey into America
William Least Heat-Moon – PrairyErth (a Deep Map)
Aldo Leopold – A Sand County Almanac
Amy Liptrot – The Outrun
Barry Lopez – About this life: Journeys on the threshold of memory
Barry Lopez – Crossing Open Ground
Richard Louv – Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature-deficit Disorder
Thomas J. Lyon – This Incomparable Land: A guide to American Nature Writing
Richard Mabey – Nature Cure
Richard Mabey – The Unofficial Countryside
Robert Macfarlane – The Wild Places
Kyo Maclear – Birds Art Life Death: The Art of Noticing the Small and Significant
Emma Marris – Rambunctious Garden: Saving Nature in a Post-Wild World
Ellen Meloy – The Anthropology of Turquoise: Reflections on Desert, Sea, Stone and Sky
George Monbiot – Feral: Searching for enchantment on the frontiers of rewilding
George Monbiot – Heat: How We Can Stop the Planet Burning
Charles Montgomery – Happy City – Transforming our lives through Urban Design
Geoff Nicholson – The Lost Art of Walking
Orion magazine – nature/culture/place
Jennifer Price – Flight Maps: Encounters with Nature in Modern America
David Quammen – The Flight of the Iguana: Sidelong view of Science and Nature
David Quammen –Monster of God: the Man-eating predators in the Jungles of History and the Mind
Janisse Ray – Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
Pattiann Rogers – The Dream of the Marsh Wren: Writing as Reciprocal Creation
Jack Rudloe – The Living Dock at Panacea
Cathy Salustri – Backroads of Paradise: A Journey to Rediscover Old Florida
Peter Sauer (ed.) – Finding Home: Writing on Nature and Culture from ‘Orion’ magazine
Menno Schilthuizen – Darwin Comes to Town: How the Urban Jungle Drives Evolution
Paul Shepard – The Only World We’ve Got: a Paul Shepard Reader
William Shore – The Nature of Nature: New Essays from America’s finest writers on nature
Fredrik Sjoberg – The Fly Trap
Rebecca Solnit – A Field Guide to Getting Lost
Rebecca Solnit – Wanderlust: A History of Walking
A.W. Spirn – The Language of Landscape
Wallace Stegner – Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: living and writing in the west
Mark Sundeen – The Unsettlers: In Search of the Good Life in Today’s America
Michael Symmons Roberts & Paul Farley – Edgelands
Terry Tempest Williams – Refuge: an Unnatural History of Family and Place
Hugh Thomson – The Green Road into the Trees
Henry David Thoreau – Walden & Civil Disobedience
Colin Tudge – The Secret Life of Trees: How They Live and Why They Matter
Jack Turner – The Abstract Wild
Peter Wohlleben – The Hidden Life of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate
Esther Woolfson – Field Notes From a Hidden City – An Urban Nature Diary
Andrea Wulf – The Invention of Nature: The Adventures of Alexander von Humboldt, the Lost Hero of Science
How to write about nature
David Petersen – Writing Naturally: A Down-to-Earth guide to Nature Writing
Teaching about nature & nature writing
Lair Christensen & Hal Crimmel (eds.) Teaching About Place: Learning from the Land
Christian McEwan & Mark Statman (eds.) The Alphabet of the Trees: A Guide to Nature Writing
Science writing
Elise Hancock – Ideas into words: Mastering the craft of Science Writing
Fiction with environmental themes
Nicholas Evans – The Loop
Jonathan Franzen – Freedom
Amitav Ghosh – The Hungry Tide
Molly Gloss – Wild Life
Melissa Harrison – at hawthorn time
Carl Hiassen – Native Tongue
Adrian Hyland – Diamond Dove
Barbara Kingsolver – Prodigal Summer
Barbara Kingsolver – Flight Behavior
Jim Lynch – The Highest Tide
James MacManus – On the Broken Shore
Delia Owens – Where the Crawdads Sing
Richard Powers – The Overstory
Annie Proulx – That Old Ace in the Hole
Annie Proulx – Barkskins
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