The Garden is pleased to honor Women’s History Month with a special online talk by New York Times best-selling author Kathryn Aalto, featuring her book Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World (Timber Press, 2020).
Her book Writing Wild ventures into the landscapes and lives of 25 diverse and extraordinary women whose influential writing helps deepen our connection to and understanding of science, ecology, and the natural world. These inspiring wordsmiths are scholars, spiritual seekers, conservationists, scientists, novelists, and explorers. They defy easy categorization, yet they all share a bold authenticity that makes their work distinct and universal.
Find inspiration as we view women’s history in the natural world through a new lens at this engaging online celebration.
(A recording will be available for registered participants.)
About the author/presenter:
Kathryn Aalto is an American landscape designer, historian, writer, and lecturer living in Exeter, England. For the past twenty-five years, her creative practice has fused nature and culture: teaching and writing narrative nonfiction, designing gardens, and speaking about the natural world.
She is the author of three books including Writing Wild: Women Poets, Ramblers, and Mavericks Who Shape How We See the Natural World (Timber Press, 2020), The Natural World of Winnie-the-Pooh: A Walk Through the Forest that Inspired the Hundred Acre Wood (Timber Press, 2015), and Nature and Human Intervention (Luciano Giubbilei, 2011).
A sought-after keynote speaker, Kathryn has given hundreds of talks throughout the US and UK. Her writing has appeared in Smithsonian Magazine, Outside, Sierra, Buzzfeed, The Scotsman, Resurgence and the Ecologist, and more. Her books have been reviewed in high profile media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BBC Countryfile. Kathryn is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley. She has Masters degrees in Garden History and Creative Nonfiction with a particular interest in biography. Before her expat life, she taught American Literature of Nature and Place in the Pacific Northwest. She is a member of the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs.
Themes in the book include:
Women’s history, nature writing, literary history, race and gender issues, diversity and environment, natural history, women writers, gender equality, climate change, women in science.
"Re-centers and gives voice to a diversity of women naturalists and writers across time." —Cultivating Place
"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
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