The Thoreau Society will award the 2024 Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing, known as the Thoreau Prize, to Joseph Drew Lanham.
J. Drew Lanham is an ornithologist, naturalist, writer, and poet who combines conservation science with personal, historical, and cultural narratives of nature. Join us at the award ceremony and address on October 25 at the Trinitarian Congregational Church in Concord. Register today.
Thoreau Prize Honoring J. Drew Lanham
An Exuberant Evening with Barbara Mossberg
In Walden, Thoreau wrote, “I desire that there may be as many different persons in the world as possible.” The Thoreau Society likewise recognizes that the contributions of all will continue to result in a more vital organization and a more vital world.
The Thoreau Society is committed to diversity and inclusion, and welcomes people of all ages, ethnicities, gender expressions and identities, origins, physical abilities, races, religions, and sexual orientations.
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The Thoreau Society is the oldest and largest organization devoted to an American author and is dedicated to promoting Thoreau’s life and works through education, outreach, and advocacy.
Established in 1941, the Thoreau Society has long contributed to the dissemination of knowledge about Thoreau by collecting books, manuscripts, and artifacts relating to Thoreau and his contemporaries, by encouraging the use of its collections, and by publishing articles in two Society periodicals. The mission of the Society is to stimulate interest in and foster education about Thoreau’s life, works, and philosophy and his place in his world and ours; to encourage research on Thoreau’s life and writings; to act as a repository for Thoreauviana and material relevant to Thoreau; and to advocate for the preservation of Thoreau Country.
Henry David Thoreau saw the exploitation of people and of nature as two sides of the same coin of injustice and oppression.
The Thoreau Society continues our namesake’s struggle to open all eyes to social and environmental injustice, and to end blindness to the consequences of unchecked racism, climate change, and other threats to individual freedom, democratic equality, and social justice in the United States and around the world. As a community devoted to Thoreau’s legacy, we are a work-in-progress, committed to the perpetual challenge of improving the Thoreau Society as an embodiment—and a promoter—of these ideals.
Featured resources
2023 Thoreau Prize Honoree: Terry Tempest Williams
Watch Terry Tempest Williams‘ Thoreau Prize Address.
Learn more about the Thoreau Prize and past recipients.
Other Resources
Listen to our NEH Summer Institute Podcasts
The Thoreau Society received a Mass Humanities Staffing Recovery Grant (2023-25) in support of our Membership and Program Coordinator. Funding from Mass Humanities has been provided through the Massachusetts Cultural Council.