Soil, Story, and Shelter

 
In this rich and reflective conversation, Renata Golden speaks with essayist Tamara Dean about her book Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless and her decades of life in Wisconsin’s Driftless region—a landscape uniquely spared by glaciers, leaving behind steep bluffs, spring-fed streams, and hidden histories. Dean explores how engaging with the land can be both a political act and a personal reckoning, weaving together environmental care, citizen science, and the ghosts of those long erased from rural memory. From foraging groundnuts to unearthing the links between reproductive rights and white supremacy, she reveals how landscape and story are inseparable. Their dialogue is a meditation on awe, resilience, and the quiet revolutions that begin at home.

About Tamara Dean
Tamara Dean is the author of Shelter and Storm: At Home in the Driftless (University of Minnesota Press, 2025), a collection of 12 true tales of discovery that invite readers to experience nature mindfully in a time of uncertainty. Tamara’s short stories and essays have appeared in The American Scholar, Creative Nonfiction, The Georgia Review, the Guardian, One Story, Orion, The Southern Review, STORY Magazine, and other publications. She is also the author of a book on sustainable living, The Human-Powered Home, and bestselling college textbooks on computer networking. Tamara has earned an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts and has been awarded fellowships at Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, Mesa Refuge, The Tyrone Guthrie Centre, and elsewhere. She teaches writing workshops independently and through writing centers such as Hugo House, The Loft, and Writers.com.

About Renata Golden
Renata Golden has studied the natural world in Arizona and New Mexico for decades. Her writing appears in literary journals and anthologies, including Dawn Songs: A Birdwatcher’s Field Guide to the Poetics of Migration, First and Wildest: The Gila Wilderness at 100, and When Birds Are Near: Dispatches from Contemporary Writers. Her essays have been finalists for the River Teeth Literary Nonfiction Book Award, Penelope Niven Creative Nonfiction Award, Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction, and Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University Award. Mountain Time: A Field Guide to Astonishment won the Southwest Book Award and was a finalist for the New Mexico/Arizona Book Award. Originally from the South Side of Chicago, she lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.