Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of the NYTimes best-selling illustrated collection of nature essays and Kirkus Prize finalist, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments, which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year and has sold 5 million copies. She has four previous poetry collections: Oceanic, Lucky Fish, At the Drive-in Volcano, and Miracle Fruit. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House.

Honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, Pushcart Prize, Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. She’s the first-ever poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.

AIMEE NEZHUKUMATATHIL

I think something happened in 2016, where I just snapped. There was a lot of a hateful news going around with American politics, and I didn’t know how to answer a lot of my kids questions then. Something I know I can do is to tell them things that I loved about this planet or things that I loved in other people because all they saw or heard about was just this weird ugliness, school shootings, leaders who were saying ‘build that wall’ to anybody who looked different than them, and so I remember the night I shut myself up in my office after the kids went to bed and just started writing about plants and animals that I loved from my childhood.

This interview was conducted by Mia Funk & Gabriela García-Astolfi with the participation of collaborating universities and students. Associate Interviews Producer on this podcast was Gabriela García-Astolfi. Digital Media Coordinator is Hannah Story Brown.

Mia Funk is an artist, interviewer and founder of The Creative Process.