Announcing the 2025 Thoreau Prize

The Thoreau Society announces that Robert Macfarlane is the winner of the 2025 Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing.

Robert Macfarlane is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people, and place. His best-selling books include Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places, and Mountains of the Mind; they have been translated into more than thirty languages, won many prizes around the world and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio, and dance.

Macfarlane’s newest book, Is a River Alive?,is scheduled for publication in May 2025. Called by The Guardian “one of the big publishing events (if not the biggest) of 2025,” Is a River Alive? takes readers to threatened river systems on three continents: the cloud forests of Ecuador, the creeks and lagoons of southern India, and the Mutehekauor Magpie River of northeastern Quebec. At its heart is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings – who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law.

MacFarlane has also written operas, plays, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. He has collaborated with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally best-selling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature. Macfarlane lives in Cambridge, England, where he is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge.

Join the Thoreau Society for a presentation by Macfarlane on June 7, followed by a book signing. Learn more and register to attend in person HERE.

Details about online access to follow. The Thoreau Society does not exclude anyone because of the inability to pay. Please contact rebecca@thoreausociety.org to request reduced rates.