Finding Kinship in Nature
Marina Richie
Feathered Forest: Aloft with Birds in Ancient Trees with Chelsea Green Publishing comes out September 8, 2026. Foreword by David George Haskell. Pre-order .
Marina Richie is an award-winning nature writer living in Bend, Oregon. Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher received the 2024 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing.
Halcyon Journey: In Search of the Belted Kingfisher
2024 John Burroughs Medal
2022 National Outdoor Book Award
2022 Foreword Indies Award.
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“Rambling among ancient forests and tuning to birds as research for my new book
opened my senses to wonder in a three-dimensional world of wild trees.”
Nature Author, Poet, and Speaker
marina richie
writing for the wilds
Marina Richie is the author of the forthcoming book, Feathered Forest: Aloft with Birds in Ancient Trees (September 2026). Her book, Halcyon Journey, In Search of the Belted Kingfisher, earned the 2024 John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing, a National Outdoor Book Award (gold), and a Foreword Indies Award (silver). She also wrote two children’s books, Bird Feats of Montana and Bug Feats of Montana. Her poems and prose accompany artist Robin Coen’s watercolors in Refugia of the Blue Mountains, a traveling exhibit with an accompanying book.
Marina’s writing appears in literary and popular magazines, online publications, in book collections, and on her website. She gives keynote talks, podcast interviews, teaches nature writing, and serves on the board of the Greater Hells Canyon Council.
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Books
Feathered Forest: Aloft with Birds in Ancient Trees
Beginning with an ascent of a 200-foot-tall Douglas-fir with a bird biologist, author Marina Richie leads us from her home in Central Oregon into the ancient forests of Cascadia, a bioregion which rivals the Amazonian rainforest in significance for climate and biodiversity.
Birds are guides to intricate and imperiled communities thriving at every level, from understory to midstory to overstory. They steer us to cool havens within multilayered, centuries-old groves that are critical refugia in a time of climate crisis. Their songs and flights show us what we must protect for the future of threatened birds, forests, and humankind.
Halcyon Journey, In Search of the Belted Kingfisher
This first book to feature North America’s belted kingfisher is a lyrical story of observation, revelation, and curiosity in the presence of flowing waters.
Far-flung adventures to other continents in search of kingfisher kin deepen the author’s relationship with Montana birds. In winter, she explores tribal stories of the kingfisher as messenger and helper.
By water’s edge, she reconciles the loss of her naturalist father and taps into her own powers, inspired by the bird of the headfirst plunge and rattling call.
Bird Feats of Montana
Discover the Big Sky’s fastest, largest, smartest, and boldest birds in Bird Feats of Montana, Including Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. The book features 114 brilliant color photographs by renowned wildlife photographer Donald M. Jones and 12 exquisitely detailed illustrations by James Lindquist.
Written for children ages 8 to 12, this playful and informative book covers 40 of the state’s birds.
feathered forest reviews
“Luminous. You can feel the deep, cool shadow of the great Western forest and the flicker of bird color flashing across it. The kind of book that inspires contemplation but also action.”
—Bill McKibben, author of Here Comes the Sun
Bill Mckibben
Author, Here Comes the Sun
“What a glorious tangle! In these pages, Marina Richie brazenly dissolves false boundaries—between bird and forest, human and wild, observer and observed. In her beautiful telling, communion is not a metaphor but a practice: witness, listen, be changed. As the ancient forest sings a chorus of relations—owl! pine! fungus! finch!—Richie guides us along a path that leads inexorably from wonder to belonging to action.”
Lyanda Lynn Haupt
Author, Rooted: Life at the Crossroads of Science, Nature and Spirit,
“By rhyming bird and tree, environmental and personal history, and close observation and activism, Marina Richie has created a literary refugium. Here, readers can find a moment of respite from capitalism’s disastrous monoculture and consider how we might return to interconnectedness with other species.”
Theo downes-
le guin
Literary executor for Ursula K. Le Guin and head, Ursula K. Le Guin Foundation
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