Shelley Read Shares a Roundup of Beautiful Nature Writing
Shelley Read
My debut novel, Go as a River, is a story of a forbidden love that forever alters the two young lives at the heart of the novel. And it is also a love story about the land itself—the landscapes that form who we are and the wild places that are as humbling as they are empowering and instructive. If you enjoyed the nature writing in Go as a River, here are my recommendations of other women authors writing with love and reverence about the natural world.
Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer
Kimmerer’s unique wisdom about the natural world merges the scientific and the sacred. As a botanist and member of the Potawatomi Nation who is also a mother and a gentle soul, Kimmerer renders undeniable the primacy of the human/nature connection. This gorgeous, reverent book has the power to change how you see the earth beneath your feet.
H Is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald
In this affecting and wholly original memoir, Macdonald tells the story of turning to the ancient art of falconry to soothe her grieving heart. When she sets her intention on training a goshawk named Mabel, her quest becomes a heart-wrenching contemplation on wildness and what can and cannot be tamed.
Migrations by Charlotte McConaghy
This is a captivating story of a young woman on a journey of redemption, both for herself and the world’s last flock of Arctic terns. Set against the backdrop of extinction, personal turmoil and the stunning natural landscapes along the migration path—from the North Atlantic to Antarctica—this lyrically written novel is as unsettling as it is beautiful.
Refuge by Terry Tempest Williams
This quiet but deeply moving classic will forever top my list of most cherished books. The author’s love of her ancestral homeland near Utah’s Great Salt Lake is the lens through which she studies, celebrates, and mourns the native birds and the changing landscape. Like all of Tempest Williams’s work, this is a poetic, earnest, beautiful call to both attention and action.
A Darker Wilderness edited by Erin Sharkey
This collection of enlightening, observant, deeply moving essays focuses on Black experiences in and with the natural world. Sharkey brilliantly frames this varied collection as a long-overdue conversation meant to challenge and expand readers’ perspectives and the definition of nature itself.
Wintering by Katherine May
May and I share the instinct to turn toward nature in the face of difficult times. In Wintering, May’s personal journey generously reminds us that the hushed beauty found in the dark, cold days of winter offers a space to heal. Her new release, Enchantment, promises to be every bit as wisely attuned to the restorative elegance of wild places.
Trace by Lauret Savoy
A fascinating deep dive into American landscapes that are at once beautiful, compelling, and haunted by pain and politics. As much a cultural and environmental history of the United States as it is memoir, Trace offers wise and often heartbreaking insights into the land and ourselves.
Blue Horses Rush In by Luci Tapahonso
Tapahonso writes about ancestry, landscape, beauty, and pain in her poems and stories of growing up in Shiprock, New Mexico. This slim but rich collection is, to me, lyrical storytelling at its best. The inaugural poet laureate of the Navajo Nation, Tapahonso’s words are sure to move your soul.
A Lady’s Life in the Rocky Mountains by Isabella L. Bird
In this Colorado classic, Bird’s 1873 account of her extended tour of the Rocky Mountains offers a rare female account of the Western frontier. Written as a series of letters to her sister back home in England, Bird’s descriptions and social analysis both challenge and enhance conventional stories of this complex time and place.
Wild Comfort by Kathleen Dean Moore
Moore’s essays are widely published in environmental magazines, and I always enjoy her razor-sharp descriptions and insights. All of her books are lovely and wise, but I especially appreciate Wild Comfort for its turn toward the natural world as a salve for deep grief.
House of Light by Mary Oliver
A keen observer of the natural world, Oliver’s poems overflow with honesty, awe, and unbridled love. House of Light remains my favorite collection, my own copy dog-eared and worn from toting it around these many years. Once you fall in love with Oliver, her selected poems, Devotions, is a must-read.
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Shelley Read is a fifth generation Coloradoan who lives with her family in the Elk Mountains of the Western Slope. She was a senior lecturer at Western Colorado University for nearly three decades, where she taught writing, literature, environmental studies, and honors, and was a founder of the Environment & Sustainability major and a support program for first-generation and at-risk students. Shelley holds degrees in writing and literary studies from the University of Denver and Temple University’s Graduate Program in Creative Writing. She is a regular contributor to Crested Butte Magazine and Gunnison Valley Journal, and has written for the Denver Post and a variety of publications.