Women Writing About Nature: A Curated Book List

I've had this lifelong fascination with writers who immerse themselves in nature and write about their experience, starting with my senior thesis on Walden in high school. But Thoreau was a man who had the privilege of building his little cabin on his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson's property, his mother did his laundry, and friends and family provided at least some of his meals. He foraged and farmed, but he was community-resourced while he wrote at length about self-suffiency.

I have often wondered what a woman might have written, had she been able to conduct the same experiment between 1845 and 1847. No doubt she would have at least included a segment about washing her own clothes and journaling in between loads.

The Love Letter by Haynes King (1878)

Thankfully, there is a buzzing hive of women writing about nature these days, and I wanted to make a reading list of their works for myself. Having read Robin Wall Kimmerer and Margaret Renkl, I wanted more of that feeling of being fully drenched in flora and fauna. When I asked for recommendations on Threads, the writing community delivered. Here's the alphabetized list I pulled from their feedback. It is by no means exhaustive. If you'd like to add more, I invite you to do so in the comments.

Books Published Within the Last Five Years

• Raising Hare by Chloe Dalton (2025) A memoir about the experience of raising a baby hare during lockdown.

• Sacred Forest Bathing by Ellen Dee Davidson (2025) A practical guide to forest bathing and a personal account of healing.

• Soil: The Story of a Black Mother's Garden by Camille Dungy (2023) A recounting of Dungy's seven-year odyssey to diversify a garden in a restrictive community.

• The Serviceberry: Abundance and Reciprocity in the Natural World by Robin Wall Kimmerer (2024) Picking up where Braiding Sweetgrass left off, Kimmerer expands on the gift economy.

• Wintering: The Power of Rest and Retreat in Difficult Times by Katherine May (2020) An invitation to change how we relate to our own fallow times.

• Earth's Wild Music by Kathleen Dean Moore (2022) A celebration of the songs of the natural world, from the call of loons to the bellow of whales.

• Crow Moon by Lucy Pearce (2024) A journey of transformation and remembering with contributions from over thirty midlife women called by the strange magic of crows.

• Fox and I: An Uncommon Friendship by Catherine Raven (2022) A biologist's unexpected and remarkable friendship with a fox at her tiny cottage in Montana.

• The Comfort of Crows by Margaret Renkl (2023) A devotional of fifty-two illustrated chapters that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard.

• The Backyard Bird Chronicles by Amy Tan (2024) The author maps the passage of time through bird sketches, daily entries, and thoughtful questions.

• Turning to Birds by Lili Taylor (2025) A series of essays in which the author shares her ecounters with birds that have captured her heart.

• The Mushroom at the End of the World by Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing (2021) A story of one of the strangest commodity chains, matsutake mushroom commerce, as a way of examining capitalist destruction.
  

Older Works

• Thirst by Heather Anderson (2019) A memoir of Anderson's record-setting 2,600-mile hike on the Pacific Crest Trail.

• Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard (1974) Pulitzer Prize winning personal narrative of one year's exploration on foot of the region around Tinker Creek in the mountains of Virginia.

• Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich (2014) A tour through the terrain of Erdrich's ancestors, part history and part memoir.

• Gorillas in the Mist by Dian Fossey (1983) Personal and scientific reporting of one of the longest-running field studies on primates.

• In the Shadow of Man by Jane Goodall (1971) An account of her first ten years with the wild chimpanzees of Gombe.

• Seeds of Hope by Jane Goodall (2015) An exploration of the secret world of plants from England to Africa.

• Crow Planet: Essential Wisdom from the Urban Wilderness by Lyanda Lynn Haupt (2011) A blending of personal "crow stories" and scholarly research.

• Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World by Linda Hogan (1995) Short essays and provocative musings on nature and our place in the ecosystem.

• Findings by Kathleen Jamie (2005) Sharp, delicate essays on the natural and unnatural world from tracking wildlife to witnessing hospital stays.

• To the River by Olivia Laing (2017) An exploration of the River Ouse from its source to the sea, tracing the role rivers play in our lives.

• Things That Are by Amy Leach (2014) A series of essays that considers the wild word from the tiniest of creatures to the furthest celestial bodies.

• A Woman in the Polar Night by Christiane Ritter (1938) The painter's account of leaving Austria in 1934 to live on the remote Arctic island of Spitsbergen.

• The Living Mountain by Nan Shepherd (1977) The author recounts her journeys into “the high and holy places” of the Cairngorm Mountains of Scotland.

• A Field Guide to Getting Lost by Rebecca Solnit (2005) A series of autobiographical essays arguing that getting lost is essential for creativity and self-discovery.

• Wilding: Returning Nature to Our Farm by Isabella Tree (2019) An inspiring story of a couple, a farm, and the transformation of a community.

• An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field by Terry Tempest Williams (1995) A manifesto on behalf of the landscape she loves as a woman, a Mormon, and a Westerner.