Nature writing
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nature writing is traditionally defined as nonfiction prose writing about the natural environment. Nature writing often draws heavily on scientific information and facts about the natural world; at the same time, it is frequently written in the first person and incorporates personal observations of and philosophical reflections upon nature.
In This Incomperable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing, Thomas Lyon suggests that nature writing encompasses a spectrum of different types of works, ranging from those that place primary emphasis on natural history facts (such as field guides) to those in which philosophical interpretations predominate. Some of the subcategories he identifies include natural history essays, rambles, essays of solitude or escape, and travel and adventure writing.
Modern nature writing traces its roots to the works of natural history that were popular in the second half of the 18th century and throughout the 19th, including works by Gilbert White, William Bartram, John James Audubon, Charles Darwin, and other explorers, collectors, and naturalists. Henry David Thoreau is often considered the father of modern American nature writing. Other canonical figures in the genre include Ralph Waldo Emerson, John Muir, Aldo Leopold, Rachel Carson, and Edward Abbey (although he rejected the term for himself).
[edit] List of contemporary American nature writers
- Rick Bass
- Wendell Berry
- Christopher Camuto
- Annie Dillard
- Gretel Ehrlich
- John Elder
- Bernd Heinrich
- Sue Hubbell
- William Kittredge
- Barry Lopez
- Bill McKibben
- John McPhee
- Sy Montgomery
- Gary Paul Nabhan
- Richard Nelson
- Sam Pickering
- Michael Pollan
- Richard Proenneke
- Robert Michael Pyle
- David Quammen
- Janisse Ray
- Scott Russell Sanders
- Gary Snyder
- Edwin Way Teale
- Terry Tempest Williams
- Robert Winkler
[edit] Resources
- Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE)
- Graduate Programs in Nature Writing and Ecocriticism Literature
- Sitka Symposium
- Whole Terrain: Resources for Writers
- Whole Terrain, journal of "reflective environmental practice"
[edit] References
- Finch, Robert, and John Elder, eds. The Norton Book of Nature Writing. New York: Norton, 1990.
- Lyon, Thomas J., ed. This Incomperable Lande: A Book of American Nature Writing. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1989.
- Stewart, Frank, A Natural History of Nature Writing. Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 1994.
