Ellen Meloy
Encyclopedia
Ellen Meloy was an American nature writer.
with a degree in art, and from the University of Montana with a master's degree in environmental studies. She married her husband Mark, a river ranger, in 1985.
An award has been named for her, and the fourth recipient is Amy Irvine.
~E.M. November 2004
Life
She graduated from Goucher CollegeGoucher College
Goucher College is a private, co-educational, liberal arts college located in the northern Baltimore suburb of Towson in unincorporated Baltimore County, Maryland, on a 287 acre campus. The school has approximately 1,475 undergraduate students studying in 31 majors and six interdisciplinary...
with a degree in art, and from the University of Montana with a master's degree in environmental studies. She married her husband Mark, a river ranger, in 1985.
An award has been named for her, and the fourth recipient is Amy Irvine.
Quotes
…in the desert there is everything and there is nothing. Stay curious. Know where you are—your biological address. Get to know your neighbors—plants, creatures, who lives there, who died there, who is blessed, cursed, what is absent or in danger or in need of your help. Pay attention to the weather, to what breaks your heart, to what lifts your heart. Write it down.
~E.M. November 2004
On the Colorado Plateau, with its considerable share of wildlands, a natural world more or less intact, the most exotic terrain may be the plateau's own history. During my recent journeys this history felt foreign and unnervingly off-the-Map, even as I lived in its heart. Gaze out from the mesa, and you will meet my duplicitous lover. You will see eternity, a desert that like no other place exudes the timelessness of nature as the final arbiter. Scrape off our century, and you will find its usurper, pressed into a nugget of inorganic matter, the single greatest threat to the continuity of life. The history inscribed itself on the Map's most alarming folios; ignoring it was no way to earn Home.—Ellen Meloy, The Last Cheater's Waltz
Awards
- 1997 Whiting Writers' AwardWhiting Writers' AwardThe Whiting Writers' Award is an American award presented annually to ten emerging writers in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and plays. The award is sponsored by the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation and has been presented since 1985. As of 2007, winners receive US $50,000.-External links:**...
- 2003 Pulitzer PrizePulitzer PrizeThe Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
nomination for The Anthropology of Turquoise Meditations on Landscape, Art & Spirit (2003) - 2007 John Burroughs Medal Award