For your reading list

Writing Wild book cover; photo of the author

Credit: Timber Press; Kathryn Aalto

Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World by Kathryn Aalto

In Kathryn Aalto's introduction to Writing Wild, she describes reading a list from Outside magazine called "Essential Books for the Well-Read Explorer," and "not[ing] with some interest that 22 of the 25 books were by white men." Writing Wild — a vibrant, critical, and insightful examination of pivotal female voices in nature writing — is her rebuttal. In 25 chapters focused on 25 writers, Aalto delves into biographies, dissects passages of their writing, contextualizes that writing within the culture of their time, and in some cases includes interviews. The writers — American and British poets, essayists, critics, journalists, novelists — often represent specific niches or perspectives within the very broad genre; Aalto explores gardens through Vita Sackville-West, meditations on walking through Nan Shepherd, Indigenous stories through Robin Wall Kimerer, Earth science through Lauret Savoy, birding through Helen MacDonald, and more. And in examining these women and their work, Aalto creates her own addition to the canon — a beautiful ode to our natural world (and a plea to protect it) in itself.

Aalto acknowledges in her introduction that this anthology isn't — can't be — exhaustive; that said, I wish she'd given more space to women of color. That we don't get to a nonwhite writer until Leslie Marmon Silko in the 1970s (nearly halfway through the book) is absolutely a testament to the failure of the publishing industry in centuries prior, but it would have been great to see Aalto make up for that lack in the second half with more nonwhite writers, many of whom are mentioned in "more reading" addendums to chapters. Still, Writing Wild remains 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. Get your copy now. —Arianna Rebolini