J. Drew Lanham Awarded 2024 Thoreau Prize for Nature Writing
Dr. Joseph Drew Lanham, a distinguished ornithologist, naturalist, and writer, embodies the spirit of Thoreau by combining conservation science with personal, historical, and cultural narratives of nature. In recognition of Lanham’s powerful work, the Thoreau Society awarded him the 2024 Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing.
Lanham’s writings explore how birders and hunters might bridge philosophical gaps to practice conservation in a more holistic way and how ethnicity (especially that of Black Americans) relates to wildlife and other conservation issues.
“Just because I watch wild birds does not mean I shouldn’t seek better for humanity,” wrote Lanham in a 2022 Concord Saunterer article. “If in my walks I identify warblers but ignore human woes, then who am I? Who are we if we organize into warbler-watching conventions to be complicit in our ignorance? I would ask, should one white bird soaring free mean we ignore the black birds grounded with their wings clipped?”
Speaking at the award ceremony at TriCon Church on October 25, Lanham reminded attendees that “if change is to come among us, a better world for humans and for wild beasts, then seeking what might lie outside of expectation is both the protest for different and the prayer for peace.”
Lanham is Alumni Distinguished Professor, Provost’s Professor, and Master Teacher of Wildlife Ecology at Clemson University. He has mentored nearly fifty graduate students, published extensively in the scientific literature, and taught courses in conservation biology, forest ecology, wildlife policy, ornithology, and environmental literature/nature writing. He is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow, the Poet Laureate of Edgefield County, SC, and the author of Joy Is the Justice We Give Ourselves, Sparrow Envy, and The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature. His memoir won the Reed Environmental Writing Award (Southern Environmental Law Center), the Southern Book Prize, and was a 2017 finalist for the Burroughs Medal.
The Thoreau Prize was established in 2010 by nature writer Dale Peterson to annually honor an accomplished writer in English who embodies the spirit of Thoreau as a gifted writer, insightful naturalist, and ethical thinker. It has previously been awarded to Dr. Jane Goodall and Terry Tempest Williams.
PHOTO CAPTION: Members of the Thoreau Prize Committee with the Honoree. (Left to right) Laura Dassow Walls, John Kucich, Richard Wrangham, H. Emerson (Chip) Blake, J. Drew Lanham, Rochelle Johnson, Anna West Winter, and Alexis Rizzuto.