Writing Wild

“A fantastic resource for readers looking to grow their TBR piles.” — The Los Angeles Times

“Exciting, inspiring, intimidating, and bold.” — San Francisco Book Review

“A heartening book, granting attention to women who dared to write and ramble wild.” — BBC Countryfile

“This fine and thoughtful book puts these remarkable women writers right smack bang in to focus where they belong—as key shapers of how we see the natural world.” — James Rebanks, author of The Shepherd’s Life and English Pastoral

Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World explores the lives, literature, landscapes, and legacies of extraordinary women who have written about the natural world. Part travel essay, literary biography, and cultural history, the book celebrates classic, new, and overlooked female nature writers. Kathryn Aalto opens Writing Wild by taking readers up England’s tallest mountain, Scafell Pike in the Lake District, to walk in the footsteps of poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth who lived in the shadow of her famous older brother, William Wordsworth, but was a writer in her own right. From there, Aalto’s essays shift back and forth between American and British nature writing, exploring amongst other things how race, gender, and physical abilities shape nature writing in ways that offer a fuller reading experienced in addition to writing by able-bodied white men that dominate the genre.  Aalto celebrates America’s first nature writer Susan Fenimore Cooper, the remarkable Gene Stratton-Porter, Mary Austin, Vita Sackville-West, Mary Oliver, and contemporary writers such as Camille Dungy, Elizabeth Rush, Carolyn Finney, Andrea Wulf, Saci Lloyd, Annie Dillard, Gretel Ehrlich, Amy Liptrot, Carolyn Merchant, Kathleen Jamie, and more. At the end of most essays are recommendations for further reading including. Contact gardens@kathrynaalto.com for a personal inscription. Price includes shipping. Shipping to UK only due to increased shipping rates.

“Writing Wild is an illuminating examination of voices often pushed to the side, challenging the canon of nature writing as it stands. It’s a book I’ll keep on the shelf—I’m certain I’ll return to it often.” — Buzzfeed Books

“Writing Wild re-centers and gives voice to a diversity of women naturalists and writers across time. It charts often un-heard women’s voices in naturalist writing–from long-dead women such as Dorothy Wordsworth and Gene Stratton Porter to more contemporary voices such as Gretel Ehrlich, Leslie Marmon Silko, Lauret Savoy, and Camille Dungy.” — Cultivating Place

“Writing Wild celebrates 25 women who opened the door to the outside and led readers through it.” — The Jefferson Exchange

“A succinct introduction to women nature writers, this elegant compilation should have a broad reach and inspire readers to seek out more about the authors featured… Aalto writes in an easy, friendly style that makes readers feel as if they are walking the paths of these women with her.”—Library Journal

“What a joy to travel these paths alongside Kathryn Aalto and such fierce, trailblazing, and perceptive women.” — Sarah L. Kaufman, Pulitzer Prize-winning Washington Post critic and author of The Art of Grace

“An impassioned and illuminating anthology that serves as an act of recovery and discovery, a personal celebration, and a timely reminder of the wealth and sheer power of women’s voices.” — Rob Cowen, author of Common Ground

“Kathryn Aalto brilliantly braids engaging personal narrative with accessible literary biography, to take readers on an inspiring pilgrimage.” — Michael P. Branch, author of Rants from the Hill and How to Cuss in Western

“An amazing, rich resource that rises above visions of conquest and domination to reveal the possibility of meeting eye-to-eye with wildness, and of being broken open and changed.” —Foreword

“This book is a wonderful jumping-off point for anyone who loves the outdoors and wants to know more about the many talented female writers who have made it their work’s focus.” — BookPage

“A generous treat, a ramble, a breath of fresh air (very much appreciated during quarantine!), and a thoroughly lovely introduction to important women in nature writing.” —Hartfield Book Company, Monticello, Illinois