Nature on Substack

It’s agreed: Substack needs a Nature category. In the meantime, here’s a deep and growing list of nature (and nature-adjacent) writers, photographers, and artists for your infinite enjoyment.

UPDATE: A new Nature Directory is coming soon! Launch is planned for May 2024. If you would like to have an expanded listing for your publication (it’s free), please fill out this Google Form.

Check out the directory-in-progress here:

I wrote a post a few weeks ago detailing my informal research into the “market” for nature writing on Substack. The reaction to that piece brought to light a couple of things: one, few of us fit comfortably into any of the existing Substack categories; and two, there are a LOT of talented nature writers and artists here.

While we await the results of our campaign for a category on Substack that fits us better, let’s raise our collective profile by visiting and sharing the work of others in this proto-category (“Nature,” for now, or maybe “Nature & Ecology”) who are new to us, as well as those favorites we’ve loved all along.

Many of us post in the Climate & Environment and/or Science categories. Some may overlap into Culture or Literature. But I don’t think most of us fit neatly in any of those. Climate & Environment is dominated by renewable energy bros plus Bill McKibben. And the Science section seems overrun with pieces on vaccination.

Still, fairly regularly, a work of one of our incredible nature writers can be found near the top of one of those categories, and that’s both well-deserved and hopeful. I’d just like to see more of it!

So, I’ve made a temporary gathering spot for our work until we find a more permanent way to showcase it.

Please help us out by sharing in the comment section your own or others’ work that I’ve missed.

I’m working through the list myself, and sharing a piece from each artist that particularly moved me, as a potential entry point into that person’s work. I’ll edit this list as an ongoing project.

I plan to develop other sharing opportunities in the near future, so I’ll keep you posted.

We have 160+ publications listed as of mid-April 2024.

In lieu of a better option having presented itself, I’ve alphabetized them by publication name. I’ll keep this pinned on my homepage for ease of location. As this grows even further, we could maybe consider some sort of graphical interface or a subcategory system.

NB: Perhaps some folks below would not consider their work to fit in a “Nature” category or would prefer to be categorized somewhere else. That’s everyone’s individual choice, of course! This list is comprised of people who frequently create nature-related work, or who have self-identified as nature writers/artists. If anyone would not like their work listed, please let me know so I can remove it.

By no means is this meant to commit anyone to a category; it’s meant only to share the breadth of incredible work here on the topic of our natural world.

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Richard Gregson
1001 Species

• I can’t stop thinking about the encounter that kicks off this thoughtful post, wherein an observer decries the rewilding of a former golf course by saying, “Yes, it’s such a shame that it’s gone. Look at it now, there’s nothing here. Just nature.”

Tracy Keeling
The 4 Percent

Abert Essays
The Abert Essays

• In just a short time reading the Abert Essays today, I have learned three new things: there’s a gorgeous, tufted-ear black squirrel called the Abert’s or Tassel-eared squirrel; pasqueflowers exist and they are otherworldly beautiful; and of course the Germans have a word for ‘migration anxiety’ and it’s Zugunruhe (and now I finally have a word for my itchy travel feet). This piece on sandhill crane migration was wonderful.

Bel Jackson Prow
The Adventure Path

Ethan Freedman
American Avocet

Anne Thomas
Anne of Green Places

• A plant ecologist moves to Grenoble in the French Alps on a two-year study visa to research alpine flora. Honestly, can you get any more romantic than this? Anne Thomas’s rambles through the mountains and her new city are captivating; this post gives an overview of her first year there.

Freya Rohn
The Ariadne Archive

J.E. Fishman
Backyard Stewardship

Amie Pearce
Beached

• I have a soft spot for the critically endangered Vaquita porpoise in the Gulf of California, and so does Amie Pearce. Her pieces on marine species and conservation are always good.

Swarnali Mukherjee
Berkana

Ken Lamberton
The Big Yard: Notes from a Pajama Birdwatcher

• I had a hard time choosing one post to link, but I think I will send you in the direction of this one, just because I’m obsessed with the tiny iridescent coppery feathers on the neck of the female rufous hummingbird — seriously, do yourself a favor and click through for this fine hummingbird photography (and more!).

Josie George
bimblings

Max Wilbert
Biocentric with Max Wilbert

• Max is well known in enviro circles for his deep-green activism, writing, and the project to protect Thacker Pass from destructive lithium mining. His publication is full of gems. This one has really stayed with me.

Filip Van Kerckhoven
A Biosphere Project

Robert Francis
Bird History

Charlie
Birdsong Academy

Ruth Allen
Breccia by Ruth Allen

• Everything this brilliant geologist and therapist writes is so worthwhile, but something about this meditation on life holding fast to stone struck a special chord with me. Her new book Weathering is now published in the UK, and its gorgeous wanderings along edges and rough patches mirror the journeys her therapy clients undergo.

Julie Gabrielli
Building Hope

• Julie is an architect and professor, and she publishes on a wide range of subjects. Her recent set of lectures on ways of seeing human dwellings was really interesting, but I will link a piece from her series Talking Back to Walden, where she considers passages of Thoreau’s classic work in light of modern environmental issues. It’s so good.

Hannah Hooper
By Hannah

Bryan Pfeiffer
Chasing Nature

• An entomologist explores the beautiful complexity and downright weirdness of insect lives with his remarkable photographs as accompaniment. What could be better? This article highlighted a fascinating gender dynamic in winter moths that I just keep thinking about.

Rob Lewis
The Climate According to Life

• The topic of this post has stayed with me — it’s nominally about climate change policy, but Rob takes a new perspective, one that perhaps Mother Earth would endorse.

Alpha Lo
Climate Water Project

Michelle Berry Lane
Coming to Ground

Chris Winson
Compassionate Nature

Heidi Zawelevsky
Conversations with Critters

Ray Zimmerman
Crane's Eye View

Susannah Fisher
Cricklewood Nature Journal

Alexander M Crow
The Crow’s Nest

Sandy Obodzinski
A Curious Nature

• I loved this meditation on solitude and togetherness in the redwood forest. As majestic and self-sufficient as a thousand-year old tree may seem, Sandy reminds us that Redwoods do not thrive alone. Nor do we. Luckily we are surrounded by a multitude of nonhuman lives, if only we have eyes to see them and the patience to listen.

Pikari
Daily Species Art

• Pikari was one of the first accounts I subscribed to after I joined Substack, and every illustration published is a delight. This one on the critically endangered Przewalski’s horse makes me extra happy, as they are one of my favorite wild beings to write about.

Chloe Hope
Death & Birds

• The name of her publication says it all; don’t miss your chance to step inside the fairy portal she provides into a world of beauty and complexity with these two words as a starting point. You won’t regret it.

Carmine Hazelwood
A Dryad’s Tale

• I think everyone who read Carmine’s post sharing photos and visions of the desert around Tucson, Arizona, immediately wanted to visit. I know I did! It was fun learning about the saguaro cactus ecosystem through the eyes of another visitor.

Bill Davison
Easy By Nature

• Maybe my favorite type of nature writing: here the author encounters a woodpecker pair and shares his gorgeous photography of a secret tree-trunk dance, with excursions into the natural history of the species, their appearance in art, and thoughts on human relationships thereto. So satisfying.

Ryan B. Anderson
Echoes from an Old Hollow Tree

Dr. Bradley Stevens
Ecologist @ Large

• Of Dr. Stevens’ many fascinating essays, the first I read was this one entitled “Sex and the Single Snail”: hermaphroditism, Fibonacci sequences, sinistral and dextral shell spirals, and love darts, oh my — a plethora of wonders in the ways of our little mollusks that recapitulate the Milky Way in their body plan. Irresistible.

Ryan Truscott
Ecotones

Tara L Newby
Elder & Wild

David Knowles
Elvers By Moonlight

Rachel Maria Taylor
Enlivened & Entangled

Chelsea Steinauer-Scudder
The Entwinement

Marsha Stopa
Essential Nature

• This nature coach and former journalist helps people unplug from the virtual and reconnect with the real: nature. Her post on pattern-recognition in naming nonhuman species — and failing her first exam ever, on tree ID skills — really hit home with me.

Kirsty Strang-Roy
e q u i n o x

Ralph Turner
Faffy’s Fotos

Rebecca Wisent
Fearless Green

• My post about the tiniest bunny and its struggle to bounce back in the American northwest was one of my favorite to research and write, and readers seemed to enjoy the ride too!

Jason Anthony
Field Guide to the Anthropocene

• This piece on the inexplicableness of human loneliness in a world truly bursting with other lives and intelligences to befriend is so, so poignant.

Erik Hogan
Field Notes

• Photographer Erik Hogan explores the wild places of his homeland of Appalachia, and the creative writing and visual storytelling that result are a delight. I keep this post in my inbox permanently so I can see his pic of a little barred owl face every time I scroll by — it never fails to give me a thrill.

Christopher Brown
Field Notes

• This author and lawyer takes readers through the in-between places of the fastest-growing urban area in America: Austin, Texas. It’s gorgeous writing that highlights the lives of those — nonhuman and human, too — who slip through the remaining slivers of wildness, making their own way in a quickly changing environment.

Liz Fulghum
Field Notes from Woodside Gardens

Nina Veteto
Flora & Forage

Michela Griffith
FLOW by Michela Griffith

Matt
Fog Chaser

Amanda Claire Vesty
Forest Heart

• I loved Amanda’s most recent post on celandines and violets: highlighting connections to human culture and medicine, and describing their places in the ecosystem. Just delightful.

Jo Thompson
The Gardening Mind

Charlotte Freeman
Getting Dirty: Material Entanglements in the Anthropocene

Kerri ní Dochartaigh
g l i m m e r s

Mike Shanahan
Global Nature Beat

• I am astounded by Mike’s generosity in freely sharing a deep pool of resources for nature writers: recent scientific studies, global news updates, and employment opportunities for writers, among other things. Here’s an example of all the incredible info he shares each week.

Lindsay Hartley
Hartfelt Expressions, Nature Connections

Christine Castigliano
Heart, Soul, & Monkeys

Susie Mawhinney
A hill and I

Sarah Byfield
The Holloway

SleepyHollow, inK.
Home|body

Andrea Joy Adams
Hopecology

Roselle Angwin
In the Beautiful Middles of Nowhere

David E. Perry
In the Garden of His Imagination

• I am new to this publication and am so, so glad readers recommended it. This post on birding and its human social overlays brought tears to my eyes, especially the quick, wild communion in the final photo.

Chris Rurik
Infinite Peninsula

• These field notes from a culvert-removal project were riveting. I love stories that find humans fixing infrastructure mistakes that harm our wild cousins — demolishing dams, taking down fences, building wildlife bridges over highways — give me those any day. Repairing roads so salmon can pass beneath to reach their home waters is magic stuff.

Lee Ann Prescott
Inspiration Station

• This is such a cool idea: Flag maker Lee Ann Prescott is developing an oracle deck based in part on the Mt. Tamalpais watershed in Northern California. Follow her colorful artistic journey here.

James Roberts
Into the Deep Woods with James Roberts

• In addition to his exquisite regular essays, James is exploring the edges of a beautiful world in his tales from Rima, which he introduces here. He writes that the purpose for his storytelling is to learn how to imagine from the wild heart of a place.

J. Paul Moore
J. Paul’s Substack

Jordan Yanowitz
Jewish Ecology

John Lewis-Stempel
John Lewis-Stempel

• Lewis-Stempel writes from Southwest France on a fascinating mix of natural and military history topics. I really enjoyed this piece on the hoopoe: you’ve got its place in mythology and human history and also its rather stinky chemical survival strategy explained in such evocative phrases as “the adult female releases a brown noisome fluid, akin to the stench of rotten meat,” a description of everything the hen coats in the “putrid goo,” and the 60cm “faecal torrents” expelled by the entire family to deter predators. Has anyone written a children’s book with hoopoe characters? They’re such a riot.

Jonathan P. Thompson
The Land Desk

• The OG of writing on the U.S. West, former editor-in-chief of High Country News and still in the saddle there as a contributing editor, writer of great books; how lucky we are that he shares his thoughts here as well. This recent piece on things that “get his goat” entertained and informed, as they all do.

Adam Calo
Land Food Nexus

Thom Eagle
leaf / notes

Becca Katz
Learning, by Nature

Chris Clarke
Letters from the Desert

• In this piece, a committed advocate for Southwest desert ecosystems visits Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument on the Arizona/Mexico border, and tells a story of human hope and suffering through a photo essay of discarded items among the cacti.

Lia Leendertz
Lia’s Living Almanac

Samantha Clark
The Life Boat

• I’ll link the first of Samantha’s posts I read, a meditation on attempts through the ages to describe the color of water, with a glimpse into her art and technique in her painting studio on the wild coast of Orkney. It’s gorgeous.

Karen Davis
Life in the Real World

• Karen’s photography never fails to amaze. Recently, she has focused her lens on ducks and ice, and the results are stunning.

Jeff Rennicke
Little Dipper

James Murdock
Madbird Newsletter

Anne Stobart
Medicinal Tree Woman

Neil Barker
Meditations on Nature | Korean-style Sijo poems

Andrew & Emma Groves
Misc Adventures Digest

Sydney Michalski
Moments

John Lovie
Mostly Water

• I have loved catching up on John’s work through his deep archives. I find thought-provoking his views on exclusionary ownership and ways to make clean water flow freely. Here’s an overview of his work and theories.

Robin Applegarth
Mother E

• Robin leads a tour through the redwood forest, spindly now from generations of logging, but on the road to recovery if given a chance. She notes, “It feels like an unjust theft by previous generations” — oh, how I resonate with this, and with trying to make amends, as her work does.

Isabelle Elena
Mulching

Cheryl Rutledge-Brennecke
My Corner Online

Diane Porter
My Gaia

Diana Renn
Mysteries That Matter

John Clayton
Natural Stories

Heather Wall
Natural Wonders

Jo Wimpenny
The Nature of Animals

Gabe Popkin
The Nature Beat

Heather Valey
Nature Fix Colorado

Priscilla Stuckey
Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a Living World

Kevin Sene
Nature’s tidings

Jane Wisbey
Nature View

Peter Shepherd
The Nest

• This piece was my entry to Peter’s work. It asks what the fox would think, the fox who was the subject of a very important and very strange legal case. I can’t wait to read more.

Catriona Knapman
Notes from Saving the World

Kelly Girardi
Notes & Reflections: On Food, Nature & Creativity

Ken Barber
The Old Mountain Man

Antonia Malchik
On the Commons

• This article on the origins of American property law sets the stage for perhaps the greatest genocide and ecocide the world has seen. A wildcrafted and abundant continent was thus transformed into the raw materials for capitalism. The implications are timely and globally relevant.

Jacob Bush
On & On : Writing Through the Journey

Misti Little
On Texas Nature

Paul F
Paul’s Exploration & Photography

Paula Borchardt
Paula Borchardt - Visual Storyteller

Linnesby
Pen, Book and Garden

Natalie McGill
Perennial Roots Farm

James Hider
A Photography Journey

Jessica McKenzie
Pinch of Dirt

Susan J Tweit
Practicing Terraphilia

• By the time you finish reading this fascinating piece, you’ll be likin’ lichens too! I bet you’ll learn something new from self-professed lichen fan-girl and brilliant writer Susan J Tweit. I am delving into her back-catalog, and it’s full of wonders.

Whitney Barkman
A Quiet Moment

Paul Wood
Ranch Naturalists

Michelle Reich
ReWilding Ritual

Chad Shelton
Ridgeline Magazine

Camilla Sanderson
The Rising of the Divine Feminine

James Freitas
Rock and Hawk

Scott Dierks
Roots of the Sky

Samantha M Burns
Runamuk Acres Conservation Farm

Jeanne Malmgren
Rx Nature

• I loved this piece from this former journalist and current nature therapist on the healing sounds of the forest. See if you don’t feel a little better just from reading her words.

Patrick Donnelly
Sage and Sand

• Practicing wildlife and wildlands law in the western U.S. for several years, I’d been peripherally aware of Patrick’s work with the Center for Biological Diversity. But I only discovered his Substack a couple of months ago. Here’s a great recent piece on the importance of “getting it right” with our green energy transition so we don’t harm more than we heal.

The Sea in Me
The Sea in Me

Jo Taylor
Seeds, Weeds and Wildflowers

D.K. Shepston
Shifting Space

Sara Catherine Lichon
Sincerely SC

Lev Parikian
Six Things

Susie Middleton
Sixburnersue

MK CREEL
a small spectacle

Laura Pashby
Small Stories with Laura Pashby

Jason Bittel
Sort of Funny Field Guides

Kollibri terre Sonnenblume
Speaking for the Trees, Wherever They’re From

• This excerpt from a book Kollibri is co-authoring with Nikki Hill captured my imagination: just envision a broad, fertile river valley, now converted to intensive chemical agriculture, but once a landscape of immense diversity and beauty supporting a healthy human and nonhuman population. Maybe, like me, you will start to think about returning it, to some degree, to that state of heaven on earth. Such good stuff.

Sue Cartwright
Spiral Leaf

Ramona McCloskey
Stone, Soil & Soul

Ruth Bradshaw
Stories of Coexistence

David B. Williams
Street Smart Naturalist: Explorations of the Urban Kind

Paul Wood
The Street Tree

Autumn Fox
Tender Mornings

Bob Dolgan
This Week in Birding

Lynne Wyness
Three Wild Steps

Anna Rose
Tides and Seasons UK

Jennifer Singleton
Tiny Garden Stories

Olivia Sprinkel
To Hear the Trees Speak

Janisse Ray
Trackless Wild

Melanie Newfield
The Turnstone

Lisa Kahn Schnell
Twig & Ink

Lis Haswell
Unprofessoring

A. Potentilla
Urban Food Forest

Thomas Winward
Urban Nature Diary

• There’s something so truly beautiful — heartbreaking, but beautiful even so — in stories of our nonhuman cousins adapting within the challenging landscapes we humans have created. I fear for them, but I cheer them on, too. Thomas’s urban journals from the UK, like this one about a mystery owl in the London night, bring this all to light so gorgeously.

George Lamb
Weaving Together

Connor McGovern
The Wellspring

Thomas Pluck
What Pluckery Is This?

Gavin Lamb
Wild Ones

Bonnie Radcliffe
Wild Quiet Folk

Mackenzie Rivers
Wild Rivers

Robin Motzer
Wildlands

Didi Pershouse
The Wisdom Underground

Karen Auvinen
A Woman’s Place is in the Wild

Robert LaCombe
The Woodlands of Ivor

• This piece on the changes in a waterfall through the course of a human lifetime gave me a beautiful sense of perspective and peace. Highly recommended.

GrrlScientist
Words About Birds

Pamela Leavey
Words and Pictures

Anita Makri
WorldWise

Rebecca K. O’Connor
Written Bird

Shane Simonsen
Zero Input Agriculture

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So, that’s a start. Like I mentioned, I’ll update this regularly, so please comment with artists and writers I’ve missed, corrections, suggestions, and other relevant info!

And feel free to share this list on Substack Notes (if you like to use it), tagging @substack with our request for a more fitting category for us bird-watching, forest-bathing, ocean-painting, Earth-loving folks.

Sending love to all you amazing creative people!
💚🌲🦉
~~Rebecca

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Western Bluebird photo in collage is from Wikimedia Commons; all others from author.