City Creatures

City Creatures book coverIn recent years, my creative non-fiction, journalism, and new media writings have provided fresh and productive outlets for bringing my interdisciplinary scholarship to bear upon current issues in science, humanities, arts, sustainability, education, and politics for a general audience.

One notable example of this is my work with the Center for Humans and Nature on the book City Creatures: Animal Encounters in the Chicago Wilderness (Univ. of Chicago Press) published in October 2015. City Creatures is also a longrunning blog project (since 2012) and current art exhibit at the Peggy Notebaert Nature Museum about city-based wildlife and human interactions.

Trail through woodland and marsh in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, 26 May 2012 (M. Bryson
Trail through woodland and marsh in the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, 26 May 2012 (M. Bryson

Our work on this began with a two-day writers’ retreat in the Indiana Dunes in May 2012, and my contribution to the book is the non-fiction essay, “Canoeing through History: Wild Encounters on Bubbly Creek” (pdf). My essays on the City Creatures blog include:

My somewhat crude place-map of Bubbly Creek, Chicago IL
My place-map of Bubbly Creek, Chicago IL (City Creatures, p266)