2024 Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference Teachers and Speakers
The Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference is an annual event that gathers people who are passionate about nature, art, science, curiosity, and wonder to share ideas, learn from each other, support each other, inspire each other, and have fun together in nature’s beauty.
We are so grateful to the stellar team of 30+ teachers, journalers, writers, authors, artists, and thought leaders in nature, nature journaling, nature writing, visual thinking, and conservation, who will share their skills with the community. Learn more about each speaker by clicking their photos below.
NOTE: The list below is in alpha order by last name. Our teacher and speaker team is subject to change.
Meet our Teaching and Speaking team—Click each photo for bio and links.
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Shane Alden
Shane Alden is a self-taught illustrator, passionate botanist, and educator who has been featured in the Chicago Tribune and on the Wild Edible World Podcast. Shane has recently collaborated with the Conservation Foundation and the Chicago Mycology Club as an instructor teaching about edible wild plants. With a background in acting and improv, he enjoys teaching and on-camera work, and his fun and informative content has attracted more than 400,000 across his platforms. He has traveled to several cities and countries for his research on plants and ecology, including a three month trip in Indonesia to study Southeast Asian plants. He believes that creating a healthy environment through hands-on learning and research can aid anyone who is willing to learn about the natural world around them.
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Fernando Gomez Baptista
Spanish artist Fernando Gomez Baptista is an illustrator, sculptor and animator, and staff artist with National Geographic since 2008. Prior to that, he was the director of graphics at El Correo—a newspaper in Bilbao, Spain, that is widely respected for its visual journalism. He combines his skill in analog and digital tools to create vivid, explanatory graphics by working closely with experts and often traveling for visual references. To create the illustrations, he often builds reference models by hand, which help with proportions, lighting, and textures. Fernando is teaching scientific illustration at the University of the Basque Country in Spain. In 2012, he was named one of the most influential graphic artists of the previous 20 years by the Malofiej Conference, an award that is often called the “Pulitzer of infographics.” He has won more than 250 awards and has earned two Emmy nominations for his animations. Fernando is a big fan of Sci- and comic books.
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Robin Lee Carlson
Robin Lee Carlson is a natural science illustrator and the author of The Cold Canyon Fire Journals. She builds careful observations of the natural world into deeper commentary on ecology and climate change, and her work centers on field sketching ecoreportage, living documentation of the ever-accelerating transformation of ecosystems by human activity. Her work has also appeared in The Common, the literary journal of Amherst College, and in Arnoldia, the magazine of the Harvard University Arboretum. She teaches online and in-person workshops that combine drawing, painting, and natural history.
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Anne Chadwick
Author, illustrator, and photographer Anne Chadwick is an avid nature journaler, fueled by curiosity, compassion, and connection. In 2016, she was elected to the board of directors of Point Blue Conservation Science, an organization dedicated to climate-smart conservation. She became chair in June 2022, and she created a Conservation Art & Science Advisory Committee in 2023. Anne has traveled in Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico, and Alaska. Pacific in My Soul, her first book, combines her passions for photography, wildlife, and creative writing. Her second book, Splitting Heirs, is a 1923 courtroom drama set in Los Angeles and France. She splits her time between Sebastopol, California, and Vancouver, British Columbia.
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Merel Djamila
Merel Djamila works as a freelance illustrator and communication specialist in northern Netherlands. She creates illustrations for educational organizations and hosts workshops for museums, incorporating her different passions–content creation, video making, drawing, graphic design, and photography. She is working on a book about travel journaling that will be published this autumn. In 2023, she spent three months traveling through Europe to capture both cities and landscapes in gouache. She soon realized that she preferred painting nature, since trees, lakes, and mountains are ever-changing, affected by light, weather, and seasons. She loves to retreat, relax, explore, and draw and paint the Wadden Islands, a North Sea archipelago off the coast of the Netherlands, Germany and Denmark with beautiful beaches, dunes, and marshes.
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Ayesha Ercelawn
Ayesha Ercelawn is a naturalist and environmental educator who has taught children and developed curriculum in living schoolyards and school gardens for more than twenty years. An education specialist for the nonprofit Green Schoolyards America, she earned her master's degree in Ecosystem Science, and that was just the start of a lifelong fascination with ecology, ethnobotany, and conservation. She volunteers with a local habitat restoration project in the San Francisco Bay Area, and she is also bringing back native species to her own yard. As a longtime nature journaler, she is often to be found pursuing her own sense of wonder—whether rambling on local trails or investigating life in her garden.
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Tony Foster
For more than forty years, British artist-explorer Tony Foster has painted en plein air, a practice that has taken him to wild places around the world. Foster documents the experience of his travels moving slowly on foot or via canoe or raft to encounter flora, fauna, people, and objects, recording his observations through daily diary notes and legally collected souvenirs that are essential elements of his artworks. His skill as a watercolorist has enabled him to articulate the beauty and physical experience of being in nature’s most remote places and has led him to create thematically related series of paintings, or Journeys. Since 1982, Foster has completed 18 Journeys, including his most recent, Watercolour Diaries from the Green River, which began its U.S. tour in May 2023 at the Whitney Western Art Museum in Cody, Wyoming. Foster’s artworks offer detailed and powerful insights into place and, in their specificity, encourage audiences to marvel at nature and encourage them to preserve and protect it. Tony Foster’s Journeys have been shown at the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, CT; Royal Watercolor Society, London; Frye Art Museum, Seattle, WA; Royal Geographical Society, London; Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, Washington, D.C.; Phoenix Art Museum, AZ; and The Foster Museum, Palo Alto, CA.
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Sofia Gazarian
Sofia Gazarian is a nature lover with a passion for sketching birds. She dedicates herself to daily drawing, capturing the beauty of birds in simple watercolor sketches. She keeps an artistic birding life list, and she is working on her own bird guidebook. She loves to study birds from all around the world and she enjoys participating in various bird challenges. She believes anyone can enjoy nature and sketch it, no matter how busy or inexperienced they feel. She wants to inspire others to start drawing birds and show how accessible and enjoyable this can be for everyone.
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Sefi George
Sefi George is an Illustrator and an anthropology educator based in Mumbai. When she's not creating nature-based illustrations or wandering about in gardens and forests, she can be found trying to build her little brand: Summer Scribbles. She is an alumnus of Riyaaz Academy of Illustrators, and has been working in the field for more than five years. She has illustrated multiple books, including Living with Leopards, with the Maharashtra forest department, and a calendar on the National Parks of India. “Drawing for me is a powerful language to connect with nature and a vital tool for nature education,” she said earlier this year in her talk, entitled “Connecting with nature through drawing,” which she gave at TEDxStXaviersMumbai. She loves nature journaling, reading picture books, and diving deep into research.
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Claire Giordano
Claire Giordano is an environmental artist, writer, and educator creatively exploring the interwoven patterns of people, place, and climate change. At the heart of her work is the goal to create visual and virtual spaces that foster connections between individuals and our warming world through art. She is also the founder of the Adventure Art Academy, where she teaches immersive virtual art classes filmed on her hiking adventures. Since 2018, she has embarked on 16 art residencies across the west at national parks, public lands, and alongside scientists. Field work is a key foundation of her work, and she averages more than 75 days out each year. Her paintings and essays have also been featured in multiple publications, including Alpinist and Western Confluence.
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Rosalie Haizlett
Rosalie Haizlett is an illustrator who creates captivating paintings that celebrate the hidden wonders of the natural world. Haizlett has been an artist-in-residence at Great Smoky Mountains National Park, the National Audubon Society, and the Roger Tory Peterson Institute of Natural History. In 2022, she was awarded the Eckelberry Fellowship for distinguished wildlife illustrators. The author of Watercolor in Nature: Paint Woodland Wildlife and Botanicals with 20 Beginner-Friendly Projects and Tiny Worlds of the Appalachian Mountains, she lives on the edge of Monongahela National Forest in West Virginia.
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Roseann Hanson
Roseann Hanson is co-founder, operations manager, and treasurer of the Wild Wonder Foundation and co-founder and logistics director of the Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference. She has worked around the world as a professional naturalist, author, conservationist and expedition leader; she has kept science-based nature and field notes journals for 40 years; and she has taught more than 150 online and in-person nature journaling, writing, and field arts classes. She is the author of Nature Journaling for a Wild Life, an 8-week guided course for beginners, and her latest book is Master of Field Arts (2022), a deep-dive into becoming a master naturalist and field artist. She has also authored a dozen natural history and outdoor books, and her work has involved thousands of miles of overlanding on five continents. She studied journalism and ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, and has worked in the American Southwest, Mexico, and East Africa as a conservationist, naturalist, and writer. Roseann enjoys integrating conservation, science, outdoor skills, and cultural awareness into her work. She is an elected National Fellow of the Explorers Club and the Royal Geographical Society in recognition of her conservation and science communications work. She established the trans-disciplinary Art & Science Program at the 117-year-old Desert Laboratory on Tumamoc Hill, part of the University of Arizona College of Science, and currently teaches through her own Field Arts Institute.
http://www.exploringoverland.com/fieldarts
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Sushma Hegde
Sushma Hegde is a self-taught artist and author living in Luxembourg. She loves painting flowers and landscapes, drawing inspiration from the nature around her. After leaving her corporate career to pursue art full-time, Sushma enjoys sharing her knowledge with others. Over the past five years, she has taught watercolor painting to more than 20,000 students. She aims to make painting easy and fun, helping more people find joy in creating art. Her best-selling book, Wildflower Watercolor, guides readers through her painting process and encourages them to appreciate the beauty of nature's imperfections. Sushma loves spending time outdoors, and she often goes on hikes with her art supplies, ready to paint whenever inspiration strikes. Besides painting, she enjoys photographing the countryside and the many wildflowers she encounters during her morning walks.
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Verena Hillgärtner
Based in Berlin, Germany, Verena Hillgärtner is an artist, educator, and naturalist with a deep appreciation for observing and documenting the often overlooked urban nature. After completing her bachelor's degree in art education, Verena started her own business in 2020 called “Wieder Wilder Werden” (German for “Rewilding”) as a nature journaling and wilderness educator. In her workshops, she helps city dwellers to creatively reconnect with nature and to see the wonders of the world around them. Her focus now is to spark love and appreciation, especially towards the wiggly, slimy, smelly, or too-many-legged beings through open-minded observation and curiosity. In 2023, she authored the first book in German on nature journaling–Nature Journaling: Your Path to More Creativity, Connection to Nature, and Curiosity–making this wonderful practice accessible to German-speaking audiences. She also translated and contributed illustrations to the German-language version of Wild Wonder Foundation’s Quick Start Guide to Nature Journaling.
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Maggie Hurley
Maggie Hurley’s art explores the natural world through a lens that balances playful observation with a deep appreciation for its beauty and vulnerability. Her subjects, mainly birds and other wildlife, are rendered in oil, gouache, and watercolor. She focuses on capturing her subjects’ unique personalities and fostering a connection with the environment. Raised in Southern California, Hurley's early life nurtured a deep love for nature. From self-taught beginnings to her formal education at Laguna College of Art and Design, she’s been creating art for as long as she could hold a crayon. Hurley's art serves as a gentle call to environmental stewardship, reminding us of nature's beauty and the need to protect it. Through her work, she aims to inspire others to cherish and safeguard our planet's delicate balance.
https://www.maggiehurley.com/artist-statement-and-biography/
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Derrick Z. Jackson
Derrick Z. Jackson is a national award-winning journalist, author, and photographer. He is co-author, with Stephen Kress, of Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock (Yale University Press); and The Puffin Plan: Restoring Seabirds to Egg Rock and Beyond (Tumblehome Books). In 2021, The Puffin Plan won first-prize in teen nonfiction from the Independent Book Publishers Association. Jackson’s puffin and loon photography earned first place awards in the 2024 National Headliner Awards, the 2023 Excellence in Craft Awards of the Outdoor Writers Association of America and the 2023 Maine Press Association Awards. He was a photography instructor at Hog Island Audubon Camp. His images of President Barack Obama were exhibited at Boston’s Museum of African American History and Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education.
Jackson is a former sports writer and reporter at Newsday and columnist and an associate editor in the op-ed pages of the Boston Globe. He currently is a fellow at the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) in climate and energy and at the Center for Science and Democracy. A Pulitzer Prize finalist, Jackson has won many national prizes, including those from the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Society of Newspaper Columnists, Scripps Howard, the Outdoor Writers Association of America, the Education Writers Association, Columbia University’s Meyer Berger Award, and the Association of LGBTQ+ Journalists. He was a 2016 Shorenstein Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, publishing a paper on the national media’s failures in the Flint Water Crisis. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Jackson is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. He was a Nieman Fellow in Journalism at Harvard University. He holds three honorary degrees and the UW-Milwaukee Distinguished Alumni Community Service award.
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Nishant Jain
Nishant Jain is an artist and writer living in Vancouver, Canada. After leaving in the middle of a PhD program in neuroscience, he began walking around the city with a sketchbook and fountain pen. This turned into an obsessive habit of what he calls “Sneaky Art,” a practice of quick sketching to capture life in his environment without drawing attention to himself. Nishant draws in cafes, on street corners, in parks, and in all kinds of public spaces. His art is a record of how cities work, and how millions of strangers live together in cooperation. Nishant’s work has been featured in news media around the world. Recently, he was an artist-in-residence on the Vancouver public transit system. Nishant writes the SneakyArt Post, a popular weekly newsletter of his drawings and observations. This year, he is working on his first book, and being a parent to a newborn.
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Stephen W. Kress
Stephen W. Kress, Ph.D., is the founder of Project Puffin (now known as the Audubon Seabird Institute), former director of the National Audubon Society's Maine Coast Seabird Sanctuaries and former vice president for bird conservation at the National Audubon Society. He is the author of many books including The Audubon Guide to Attracting Birds and The National Audubon Society's Birder's Handbook. He is also co-author, with Derrick Jackson, of Project Puffin: The Improbable Quest to Bring a Beloved Seabird Back to Egg Rock; and The Puffin Plan: Restoring Seabirds to Egg Rock and Beyond. He has dedicated more than 50 years of his life to puffins, seabird conservation, and habitat restoration, and he is world renowned for the innovative methods he developed that are now benefitting more than a third of all seabird species. Kress is also the author of numerous books, articles, and scientific papers on seabird conservation. He teaches summer programs at the Hog Island Audubon Camp in Bremen, Maine and he is an associate of the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology in Ithaca NY, where he developed and teaches a popular course in field ornithology. In 2024, he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Seabird Group “in recognition of significant and distinguished contributions to seabird conservation and restoration, mentoring, and the Pacific Seabird Group.” In 2023, he received a lifetime achievement award from the Natural Resources Council of Maine. He earned his Ph.D. from Cornell University and his master's and undergraduate degrees from Ohio State University. He lives in Ithaca, NY.
https://seabirdinstitute.audubon.org/
https://hogisland.audubon.org/
https://shop.projectpuffin.org/
https://www.audubon.org/news/50-years-project-puffin-oral-history-incredibly-audacious-idea
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Mattias Lanas
Mattias Lanas is a Chilean-American artist and science illustrator currently based in Madrid, Spain. A Fulbright scholarship recipient, Mattias studied Earth Systems at Stanford and completed CSUMB’s Science Illustration Graduate Program. Besides working on art commissions, he leads workshops, field sketching trips, and develops his own art projects. His subjects of special interest are botany and entomology, but also enjoys urban sketching. He has lived in Chile, Colombia, France, Papua New Guinea, Spain, and the US, and no matter the location, he takes every opportunity to get out into nature. He is a firm believer in using sketching to more deeply observe and understand one’s surroundings. He works closely with The Foster Museum in California and has taught at The Chewonki Foundation in Maine. When not in the field, he can be found tending to his houseplants, baking sourdough bread, or planning his next botanical expedition.
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John Muir Laws
John Muir Laws (aka Jack) is a principal leader and innovator of the worldwide nature journaling movement and the co-founder of the Wild Wonder Foundation. As a scientist, educator, and author, Jack helps people forge a deeper and more personal connection with nature through keeping illustrated nature journals and understanding science. Jack has kept nature journals since he was a child. As a dyslexic, Jack struggled in school. He found his place and delight in learning through spending time in nature and keeping notebooks of his observations, discoveries, and adventures. Trained as a wildlife biologist and scientific illustrator, he now observes the world with rigorous attention and awe. He looks for mysteries, plays with ideas, and seeks connection in all he sees. He has found that attention, observation, curiosity, and creative thinking are not gifts, but instead are skills that grow with training and deliberate practice. As an educator and author, Jack shares ways to make these skills a part of everyday life. He is the author and illustrator of several books including The Laws Guide to Nature Drawing and Journaling (also available in Spanish), The Laws Sketchbook, The Laws Guide to Drawing Birds, Sierra Birds: a Hiker’s Guide, Sierra Wildflowers: A Hiker’s Guide, and The Laws Guide to the Sierra Nevada. He is co-author with Emilie Lygren of How to Teach Nature Journaling.
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Jean Mackay
Artist and educator Jean Mackay has been exploring and sketching nature for more than 25 years. Working in all kinds of settings, from tide pools to farm fields to her own backyard in Upstate New York, Jean’s journals reflect a keen eye for detail and profound sense of wonder. She is the author/illustrator of The Nature Explorer’s Sketchbook (2020). Jean teaches online and in-person classes and offers immersive workshops through Winslow Arts Center in Bainbridge, Washington and Hog Island Audubon Camp in Maine. Discover the ordinary, yet extraordinary things that she encounters close to home and farther afield on her blog, Drawn In.
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Akshay Mahajan
Akshay works as a hardware engineer most of the week, which means his days are usually packed with attempting to make sense of the unknown unknowns, churning plausible solutions, and then trying to diagram his thoughts in front of his team. Nature journaling for him is no different. The unique structure and mechanism of nature starts a series of cognitive contraptions, which then become fun to connect when he dumps it all out in his journal. “There is just so much going on in nature, that I am unconsciously stimulated to capture as much information as I can through the means of text, arrows, diagrams, color keys, memory associations, or even just fun cartoons—I love cartoons!” says Akshay. “And not everything on the page needs to match what the internet says: for me, simple guess-work of why things are the way they are is just as fascinating as the real thing!”
Also a massive bug-fanatic, Akshay is teaching a class on Sierra Moths at our 2024 Wild Wonder Sierra Nevada Nature Journaling Retreat, and you can buy stickers of some of his Sierra Moth illustrations in our Wild Wonder store.
https://instagram.com/nature.doodles.by.inkventor?igshid=NWRhNmQxMjQ=
https://instagram.com/harlequin.project.by.inkventor?igshid=NWRhNmQxMjQ=
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Yvea Moore
Based in San Francisco, California, Yvea Moore is a restoration ecology volunteer, nature steward and educator, and long-term coordinator for and supporter of the nature journaling community. Her roles include co-hosting John Muir Laws’ regular weekly classes and Wild Wonder special fundraiser classes, video editing, and other behind-the-scenes work, leading the biweekly online gathering Pencil Miles & Chill, and teaching the introductory botany series “Plant Families in Our Foods.” Yvea’s most recent project involves interviewing stewards in the nature journal community about their work in hopes of increasing stewardship visibility and accessibility for other community members–you can find the series, called Be the Change, on Yvea’s YouTube channel. She has consistently kept a nature journal of her own about her restoration site, Chrissy Field in San Francisco, which has helped her to become a better steward and communicate her work. Yvea hopes to bridge connections among nature journal community, stewardship communities, and urban youth.
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Brooke Morales
Brooke Morales is a designer and writer who uses nature journaling and urban sketching to notice the worlds within the world around her. Brooke believes inspiration is everywhere and has made sketching a part of her daily life by centering her process around portability and spontaneity–capturing moments to see them better in the present and to remember them better in the future. She’s passionate about inspiring others to open their sketchbooks and focus on the process–not the product–helping people connect more deeply to what truly matters. Brooke's mantra is “Just start!". In addition to her sketchbook practice, Brooke has been painting the sky each day since late 2022 as part of her 365 Skies project. Painting daily windowscapes (aka skyscapitos) helps her observe nature more intentionally and notice patterns over time, even on days when she can’t venture out.
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Anastasiia Morozova
Anastasiia's bond with nature originates from her childhood in Russia's Ural Mountains, which fostered her early love for the environment. Initially trained in classical art at the Academy of Fine Arts, she pursued a master's degree in Contemporary Art Management in Paris, broadening her horizons within the art world. However, her move to southern Italy with her husband in 2017 reignited her passion for creativity, leading to nature-inspired illustrations with watercolor. Now, as a digital nomad and travel sketcher, she draws inspiration from global adventures, blending nature's beauty with local flavors and traditions. Anastasiia's journey as a creative entrepreneur involves collaborations worldwide, illustrating books, and sharing expertise through her educational platform. Her mission is to inspire others to reconnect with nature through art, fostering a community passionate about creativity. With a dual perspective as a freelance artist and curator, she envisions her projects as holistic art education hubs, enhancing skills and nurturing a deep connection to nature.
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Rosemary Mosco
Rosemary Mosco is a writer, cartoonist, and naturalist. She creates acclaimed science books for kids and adults, including the national bestseller A Pocket Guide to Pigeon Watching. Her nature comic Bird and Moon won the National Cartoonists Society’s award for Best Online Short Form Comic. She’s written and drawn for The New York Times, Audubon, the PBS show Elinor Wonders Why, The Old Farmer's Almanac for Kids, Ranger Rick, and more, and makes a regular comic strip in the Cornell Lab of Ornithology's Living Bird magazine. Her climate change comics were exhibited at AAAS headquarters and the Peabody Essex Museum. She also served as a judge for a Festival of Bad Ad-hoc Hypotheses, judged a bird tattoo contest, and co-founded a week celebrating invertebrate butts. Her favorite glacial landform is the esker.
Rosemary is the co-creator and illustrator of the forthcoming Wild Wonder zine: Your Quick Start Guide to Birding, which will debut during this year's Wild Wonder Conference.
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Aimee Nezhukumatathil
Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of a collection of food essays, Bite by Bite: Nourishments and Jamborees, and the New York Times best-selling collection of nature essays, World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks, & Other Astonishments, which was chosen as Barnes and Noble’s Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize in nonfiction. She also wrote four previous poetry collections including Oceanic. Her most recent chapbook is Lace & Pyrite, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Amy’s honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. She is poetry editor for Sierra magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club, and she is also professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.
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Marley Peifer
Marley Peifer has nature journaled in the Amazon rainforest, the Serengeti, the length of the Grand Canyon by raft, and the jungles of Ecuador, Panama, Colombia, and Costa Rica. He is a passionate educator with more than 10 years of experience teaching nature journaling online and in person, and he has led hundreds of nature journaling trips in person in English and Spanish. He is committed to developing nature journaling as an applied tool to help save nature and humans on this planet. He has also created more than 500 videos about nature journaling available on his YouTube channel, including How to Nature Journal at Home, How to Choose a Sketchbook for Nature Journaling, Nature Journaling on a Jaguar Trail, as well as interviews with pros, beginners, and nature journal kids.
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Mike Rohde
Mike Rohde is the author of two bestselling books: The Sketchnote Handbook (2012) and The Sketchnote Workbook (2014). He teaches workshops online and around the world that encourage people to use visual thinking skills to generate, capture, and share ideas more effectively. Mike is the illustrator of bestselling books REWORK, REMOTE, The $100 Startup, and The Little Book of Talent. He has been commissioned to create live sketchnotes for conferences and events, including SXSW Interactive, An Event Apart, Summit Series, World Domination Summit, and The Storyline Conference. Mike is a veteran designer who creates usable, compelling design solutions for software and web applications. He lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin with his wife and 3 children.
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Kate Rutter
Kate Rutter is an avid nature journaler, urban naturalist, educator, and native plant enthusiast who enlivens nature-human connection through sketching, observation, and curiosity. A lifelong sketcher with an experimental and rambunctious visual practice, Kate’s education work spans online teaching; corporate and nonprofit workshops; conferences and events; nature journal workshops at public gardens, private gardens, and nurseries; and serving as adjunct professor at the California College of the Arts. Kate earned a B.A. in Studio Art from Wellesley College. She serves on the board of the Wild Wonder Foundation, and she is one of the illustrators of the zine, Your Quick Start Guide to Nature Journaling, and the creator of the zine, 7 Ways to Connect with Nature.
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Amy Schleser
Amy Schleser is a science communicator, nature journaler, and teacher. She was raised in an anti-science household, but fell in love with science in college. She began her career at the Field Museum writing and developing science exhibitions, and currently creates science videos for kindergarten through fifth grade classrooms. Amy runs a nature journal club in her area and has taught classes through Audubon, the Southern Wisconsin Bird Alliance, the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin, and more. She started nature journaling her citizen science projects in 2021, collecting data about songbirds, bald eagles, frogs, monarchs, and more. She is passionate about inspiring scientific curiosity through art.
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Susan Schubel
Susan Schubel, aka Seabird Sue, is a biologist, artist, builder, outreach educator for Project Puffin since 1999, and chief decoy painter for Mad River Decoys by Audubon. She earned her bachelor’s degree in zoology and art from the University of New Hampshire.
https://seabirdinstitute.audubon.org/decoys/mad-river-decoys-audubon
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Amy Tan
Amy Tan is a bestselling novelist, essayist, and nature journalist. Her latest book is the New York Times bestseller The Backyard Bird Chronicles (Knopf, 2024), with a forward written by David Sibley. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and in 2023 she received the National Humanities Medal. She has been a member of the Nature Journal Club on Facebook since 2016 and also has taken workshops with author, artist, and educator John Muir Laws, which led to her passion for nature journaling. She wrote the introduction to How to Teach Nature Journaling by John Muir Laws and Emilie Lygren. She is the subject of the documentary, “Amy Tan: Unintended Memoir,” part of which was filmed at the first-ever Wild Wonder Nature Journaling Conference at Asilomar in Monterey in 2019, where Amy sketched with fellow nature journalers Fiona Gillogly and John Muir Laws. As part of her informal nature studies, Amy has served as a go-fer in field research with biologists, including one expedition that documented the existence of a single ant colony on Easter Island, and another study on the social system of a community of female rattlesnakes in Colorado that gather to protect their young. She is an instructor with Masterclass, in which she discusses in part how observing nature is similar to developing characters. Her passion for birds led her to joining the board of American Bird Conservancy, which is dedicated to conserving wild birds and their habitats throughout the Americas. Amy recently appeared in a New York Times online event with Christian Cooper on “The Joy of Birding,” and in 2022, she was the host of “Selected Shorts: Bird Stories,” held at Symphony Space in New York City and also live streamed. She is grateful to the Nature Journal Club and Wild Wonder Foundation for inspiration, resources, and encouragement.