About this item
With humor, humility, and awe, one woman attempts to restore 200 acres of farmland long gone-to-seed in the Blue Ridge Mountains, facing her own limitations while getting to know a breathtaking corner of the natural world. When Paula Whyman first climbs a peak in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in search of a home in the country, she has no idea how quickly her tidy backyard ecology project will become a massive endeavor. Just as quickly, she discovers how little she knows about hands-on conservation work. In Bad Naturalist, readers meander with her through orchards and meadows, forests and frog ponds, as she is beset by an influx of invasive species, rattlesnake encounters, conflicting advice from experts, and delayed plans - but none of it dampens her irrepressible passion for protecting this place.
About the Author
Paula Whyman??s debut linked story collection, YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER, is forthcoming from TriQuarterly Books/Northwestern University Press in May 2016. Her stories have appeared in McSweeney's Quarterly, Virginia Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, The Hudson Review, and more. Her fiction was selected for the anthology Writes of Passage: Coming-of-Age Stories and Memoirs from The Hudson Review (Ivan R. Dee) . Her work has been supported by fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, The Studios of Key West, and VCCA, and she was a 2014 Tennessee Williams Scholar in Fiction at the Sewanee Writers Conference. Her humor writing and interviews have appeared in The Washington Post and The Rumpus, and her commentary was broadcast on NPR. Paula is a member of The MacDowell Colony Fellows Executive Committee (FEC) .A music theater piece, "Transfigured Night," based on a story in Paula's debut collection, is in development with composer Scott Wheeler. Paula is a visiting writer for the Pen/Faulkner Foundation's Writers in Schools program in Washington, DC, and The Hudson Review's Writers in Schools/CUNY College Now program in Harlem and the South Bronx, New York. Her fiction is part of the curriculum at The Young Women's Leadership School in Harlem.
