In 2016, after working in the environmental field for more than fifteen years, I left my cubicle and took my husband and three sons to Colorado, my birthplace and heart’s home, where we spent six weeks hiking through the mountains. From this experience I wrote Uphill Both Ways: Hiking toward Happiness on the Colorado Trail, a memoir about escaping the disappointments of midlife while forging connections with nature and my family in the wilderness. The manuscript is currently out on submission. Through my writing, I explore the connections between humans and nature, embrace the extremes of motherhood, and confront the emotional effects of environmental degradation. My 2018 essay “The Sparrow’s Song” was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Other essays have appeared in Orion, Snowy Egret, The Maine Review, Zoomorphic, About Place Journal and other publications. My short stories have been published in Brain, Child Magazine, Saltfront, and the This Side of the Divide anthology, among others. I'm a Maine Master Naturalist and a member of the Maine Master Naturalist Program board of directors, and I'm co-coordinating the 2020 MMNP training course. I also teach workshops in nature writing and nature journaling and am a senior editor and Literary Reflections co-editor at the journal Literary Mama. I have a BA in Human Ecology from College of the Atlantic and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast program. I live in central Maine with my family. |
Copyright © 2017 Andrea E. Lani. All rights reserved.