wild writing in the news
Wild Writing Alumna Melina Walling's essay "The Snake and the Sanctuary," won the 12th Annual Contest in Creative Nonfiction at Terrain.org, an independent magazine founded in 1997 that focuses on place. The piece begins with the quote, "We fear because we care. Because we love too much."
Emily Polk received the School of Earth, Energy, and Environmental Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award at the School's commencement ceremony on June 17, 2019. Wrote one student nominator, “I will never forget the way that Emily empowered me, and the students around me, to truly commit to self-betterment. She recognized potential in me that was seen by few others.”
Wild Writing inspired Sydney Macy DCI '17 to focus on a new dimension of her lifetime work of protecting the beauty and resources of the West. Sydney said, “The combination of the reading we did, interacting with extremely smart and committed students, and of course the challenge and pleasure of the writing, helped me develop a new purpose."
Margrit Benton
Sarah Peterson Pittock
Wild Writing asks students to address what counts as wilderness and why it matters. Throughout the quarter, students work to integrate personal narrative, wilderness experience, and environmental scholarship in a three thousand word essay. They consider how diverse American environmental thinkers of the past three centuries used writing to transform perceptions of wilderness . . . then contribute their own “wild” stories to the canon.
Lauren Oakes and Emily Polk
"When we come together each month, we are writers first—seeking solace and hope through shared experience. We’re searching for solutions to our world’s environmental needs with words, not just numbers. We did not realize it when we first met, but we understand now, years later, that our group would become a metaphor for the kind of world we want to shape through our words."
Wild Writing's Richard Nevle receives Stanford's Walter J. Gores Award, the university's highest teaching honor. Nevle was commended for his "relentless work to deliver the best education for students and to provide insightful and sensitive advice” and “for motivating students from diverse academic backgrounds to challenge themselves and each other.”
Emily Dial’s extraordinary essay, “Waves Don’t Die: On Blackness and Water,” speaks to the painful historical legacy and practices of discrimination that have conspired to erode connections between Black cultural identity and affinity with the marine environment. Her Wild Writing essay deftly interweaves a powerful personal narrative with compelling research and lyrical, succinct language in a way that can help heal the estrangement of African-American communities from the natural world.
