Environmental and Nature Writing: A Writer's Guide and Anthology

by Sean Prentiss, Sean Prentiss (Editor), Joe Wilkins, Joe Wilkins (Editor)

Overview

Offering guidance on writing poetry, nonfiction, and fiction alongside an extensive anthology of models, Environmental and Nature Writing is a complete introduction to the art and craft of writing about the environment in a wide range of styles. Now fully revised and updated throughout, this second edition features: a whole new chapter on place-based activities; a more international look at the genre with a completely revised anthology; and a greater focus on climate justice and sustainable transformation. With discussion questions, writing prompts and new extended experiential activities throughout, Environmental and Nature Writing: A Writer's Guide and Anthology covers such topics as:

· The history of writing about the environment from the ancient world to contemporary works
· Image, description and metaphor
· Environmental journalism, poetry, and fiction
· Researching, revising and publishing
· Styles of nature writing, from discovery to memoir to polemic

The craft guide and anthology now wholly conversant to give an in-depth look at the various ways to write about the environment, the book also includes inspiring examples of work by Ross Gay, Mazimiliane Donicht, Nick Neely, Camille T. Dungy, Amy Nezhukumatathil, John Hausdoerffer among many others!

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781350346499
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Academic
Publication date:	03/05/2026
Series:	Bloomsbury Writer's Guides and Anthologies
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Sean Prentiss is Associate Professor of English at Norwich University, USA. He is author of Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave (2015), which won the National Outdoor Book Award for Biography/History. He is also co-editor of The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre (2014).

Sean Prentiss is Associate Professor of English at Norwich University, USA. He is author of Finding Abbey: The Search for Edward Abbey and His Hidden Desert Grave (2015), which won the National Outdoor Book Award for Biography/History. He is also co-editor of The Far Edges of the Fourth Genre (2014).

Joe Wilkins is Associate Professor of English at Linfield College, USA. His memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing Up on the Big Dry won the GLCA New Writers Award for non-fiction and his work has appeared in Georgia Review, Harvard Review and Slate among many other periodicals.

Joe Wilkins is Associate Professor of English at Linfield College, USA. His memoir, The Mountain and the Fathers: Growing Up on the Big Dry won the GLCA New Writers Award for non-fiction and his work has appeared in Georgia Review, Harvard Review and Slate among many other periodicals.

Table of Contents

Part I: An Introduction to Nature and Environmental Writing
1. The Trailhead
2. A Short History of Nature and Environmental Writing
Part II: The Craft of Nature and Environmental Writing
3: Seeing the World, Believing the World
4: Living Maps
5: People and Place
6: The River Above, the River Below
7: The Art of Activism
8: A World Larger than Ourselves
9: The Nature and Environmental Essay, Story, and Poem
10: One More Time to the River: Writing is Rewriting
11: A Trail Guide
12: Place-Based Activities
Part III Environmental and Nature Writing Anthology
Creative Nonfiction
Fiction
Poetry
Index

Editorial Reviews

Praise for the first edition: This book presents an introductory history of nature writing-covering subcategories ranging from pastoral and adventure writing to postcolonial and climate change narratives-and serves as a comprehensive guide to the elements of its craft in essays, stories, and poems. Both veterans and newcomers to environmental and nature writing will find inspiration in the exercises and anthology sections, which include work by Camille T. Dungy, Juan Felipe Herrera, Benjamin Percy, and many others.” —Poets & Writers

“The planet is in a real crisis - and one good effect is that it seems to be producing ever more wonderful writers about nature and the environment, almost as a human produces antibodies to ward off disease. Here you will find introductions to many of them—and an invitation to join their ranks.” —Bill McKibben, editor of American Earth: Nature Writing Since Thoreau

“Sean Prentiss and Joe Wilkins' new craft text and anthology, Nature and Environmental Writing, is a writing manual full of provocative prompts and a respectful and informative literary history of the genre we have previously kept in a small box marked “nature writing.” It also includes a discerning multi-genre reader. The book challenges writers to factor into their writing the imprint of place and landscape on the human story. Whether writers adopt this textbook for a classroom setting or embark upon its lessons and inspirations in a self-study, they will surely come away with new and wild ideas about the subtle influences that science, the natural world, and the environmental imagination exert on all of our experiences, memories, and stories.” —Debra Marquart, Professor of English at Iowa State University and author of The Horizontal World

“This is lucid, interesting and highly readable.” —Hywel Dix, Bournemouth University, UK

“The sense of historical development coupled with the sensitivity to the changing social and cultural landscapes makes this book useful to a number of audiences and promises to invite even more nature writers to join those already on the trail … Part II focuses on various writerly concerns such as tone, symbol, point of view, character (both people and place), persona, research, revision, and the like. Prentiss and Wilkins deal with these issues by creating chapters that offer related readings from the anthology, a free-write prompt, an illustrating vignette, a discussion of the issue at hand, and exercises. These are standard writing issues for nature writers, and I find Prentiss and Wilkins's treatment of them straightforward and refreshing … Environmental and Nature Writing: A Writer's Guide and Anthology includes nonfiction, fiction, and poetry and provides a great range of writing from multiple perspectives covering multiple genres. I find the collection useful, as models for writers and as challenges to how we define nature and environmental writing. Prentiss and Wilkins have given us a useful trail to follow … I will use Prentiss and Wilkins's book the next time I teach nature writing.” —ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment

From the Publisher