Michael Branch

Michael P. Branch is a writer, environmentalist, father, desert rat, and curmudgeon who lives with his wife and two young daughters at 6,000 feet in the remote, western Great Basin Desert. He is Professor of Literature and Environment in the English Department at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he cofounded the nation’s first graduate program in Literature and Environment studies. Branch is the author of more than 200 essays, articles, and five books, including the Pulitzer Prize-nominated ‘John Muir’s Last Journey: South to the Amazon and East to Africa’ and ‘Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness.’ His creative nonfiction includes pieces that have received Honorable Mention for the Pushcart Prize and been recognized as Notable Essays in the Best American Essays, the Best Creative Nonfiction, the Best American Science and Nature Writing, and the Best American Nonrequired Reading. When not ranting or writing, he plays blues harmonica, drinks sour mash, curses at baseball on the radio, cuts stovewood, and walks at least 1,200 miles each year in the surrounding hills, canyons, ridges, arroyos, and playas. His latest book, ‘Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, a Drunken Mary Kay Lady, and Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert’ comes out in June.