Nonfiction

An essayist hikes through an ancient seabed in the Huachuca Mountains, surveying the status of her relationships and of a rare but resilient desert flower.

Documenting an endangered American eel population in the Muhheakantuck River, a professor of natural history sees our own biology mirrored in the evolution, migration, and sexuality of these slinky ocean dwellers.

Under the waves of a storm off the Galápagos Islands, a biology student confronts her childhood fear of and fascination with the ocean, exploring the legacies of exclusion that have denied Black people in the United States access to swimming.

A traveling scholar looks to wasps, jaguars, coyotes, bobcats, and owls for a sense of wild recognition, contemplating the mixed consequences of how nature observes itself.

Too late to join a walking tour at Cedars of Lebanon State Park in Tennessee, a naturalist finds herself lost in the glades.

With the aid of a painting by J. Jay McVicker, an Oklahoma outsider considers historic curios, queerness, red politics, and scissortail flycatchers.

Contemplating public sculptures, a citizen examines the relationships between American exceptionalism and shame, historic massacres and meme culture.

In her first postpartum weeks, a writer sheds embarrassment while becoming acquainted with her body’s new demands, leaning into a newly discovered liberation.