The World Grows in Me: Learning to Write About Nature

Blog

The World Grows in Me: Learning to Write About Nature

For the May 2018 installment of our monthly webinar series, we heard from Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Born to a Filipino mother and Malayali Indian father, Aimee is a writer and poet best known for her jovial and accessible reading style and lush descriptions of nature and landscapes. She is professor of English in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program. Her newest, recently-published collection of poems, Oceanic, "hums a bright blue note—a sensuous love song to the Earth and its inhabitants." Aimee was a keynote speaker at NAAEE's 2016 conference in Madison, WI. AIMEE'S 2016 KEYNOTE

watch the recorded webinar

Aimee Nezhukumatathil 



Born to a Filipino mother and Malayali Indian father, Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of four books of poetry: Lucky Fish, winner of the Hoffer Grand Prize for Prose and Independent Books; At the Drive-In VolcanoMiracle Fruit; and Oceanic. Her newest collection of poems, Oceanic, was recently published in April 2018. She is also the author of the forthcoming book of illustrated nature essays, World of Wonder

With Ross Gay, she co-authored Lace & Pyrite, a chapbook of nature poems. She is the poetry editor of Orion magazine and her poems have appeared in the Best American Poetry series, American Poetry Review, New England Review, Poetry, Ploughshares, and Tin House. Awards for her writing include an NEA Fellowship in poetry and the Pushcart Prize. She teaches at The State University of New York at Fredonia, where she was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal of Excellence and named the campus-wide Hagan Young Scholar. In 2016-17, Aimee will be the Grisham Writer-in-Residence at the University of Mississippi’s MFA program in creative writing.

Aimee is also known for her dynamic and joy-filled teaching. Equally at ease in a university or high school classroom, she often serves as a poetry “ambassador,” bringing the delights and joys of reading and writing poetry to classrooms all over the country.