Reading with Beloved Nature Author Alison Hawthorne Deming

Alison Hawthorne Deming is author of six poetry collections and five nonfiction books. Her work centers on relationships between nature and culture, art and science. Her most recent books are: Blue Flax and Yellow Mustard Flower, poetry, (Red Hen Press 2025) and A Woven World: On Fashion, Fishermen, and the Sardine Dress, nonfiction, (Counterpoint Press 2021). Her first book Science and Other Poems was selected by Gerald Stern for the Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets. She has edited three anthologies, including: The Gift of Animals: Poems of Love, Loss, & Connection, (Storey Press 2025), and, co-edited with Lauret E. Savoy, The Colors of Nature: Culture, Identity, and the Natural World. Her work is anthologized in the Norton Book of Nature Writing and Best American Science and Nature Writing, among many other collections. Deming served as Poet-in-Residence at the Jacksonville Zoo and Gardens in Florida for the Poets House “Language of Conservation” project and at Milwaukee Public Museum and Milwaukee Public Library for the Poets House “Field Work” project. Her awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, Stegner Fellowship at Stanford University, Borchard Foundation Fellowship, Fine Arts Work Center Fellowship, two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and Pushcart Prize. Deming is former Agnese Nelms Haury Chair of Environment and Social Justice, former Director of the University of Arizona Poetry Center, and current Regents Professor Emerita at the University of Arizona. She lives in Tucson, Arizona and on Grand Manan Island, New Brunswick, Canada.