Alison Townsend’s newest book is a memoir in essays, The Green Hour: A Natural History of Home (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). She is also the author of two books of poetry, The Blue Dress (White Pine Press, 2003) and Persephone in America (Southern Illinois University Press, 2009), winner of the Crab Orchard Open Poetry Competition, as well as two chapbooks, and a collection of short prose, The Persistence of Rivers: An Essay on Moving Water (Burrow Press, 2017), winner of the Jeanne Lieby Nonfiction Prize. Her poetry and essays appear in journals such as Kenyon Review, Parabola, The Southern Review, and Under the Sun, and have been recognized in Best American Poetry, The Pushcart Prize, and Best American Essays. Her awards include a Wisconsin Arts Board Fellowship, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater Chancellor’s Regional Literary Award, and the 2020 Rattle Poetry Prize. She’s had residencies at Dorland Mountain Arts Colony, Hedgebrook, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Spring Creek Project, and Write On, Door County. She is professor emerita of English at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where she teaches creative nonfiction and nature writing.  

Photo by Tom Umhoefer