J. Drew Lanham, PhD, is a creator; a poet, a writer, a curator and a libbretist. He is a naturalist/bird-adorer/hunter/conservationist/farmer who blends wild ecology into the social context of human being, past present and future. Drew is also a Certified Wildlife Biologist and a Distinguished Alumni Professor of cultural and conservation ornithology at Clemson University. He is the Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina and the author of Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts (Hub City, 2021) and the award-winning, The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (Milkweed Editions, 2016). Drew’s academic and artist work centers on ethnic perspectives of wildness and conservation. Drew’s creative work and opinion appears abundantly online and in print in venues such as Orion, Emergence, Vanity Fair, Oxford American, High Country News, Bitter Southerner, Cutthroat, Terrain, Places Journal, Literary Hub, Newsweek, Slate, NPR, Story Corps, Audubon, Sierra Magazine, Mud Review, The New York Times, American Bird Conservancy, Leopold Outlook , Flycatcher Journal, and Patagonia “This is Love”, “Threshold.” and “On Being” podcasts. His online presence on YouTube as well as social media is extensive. Drew has been featured in Garden and Gun Magazine and Clemson World. He teaches writing workshops in creative nonfiction for Bread Loaf Environmental Writer’s Conference, Northwoods Writer’s Conference, Elk River Writer’s Conference, and Orion. He is an editor for Cutthroat Journal, a contributing editor for Orion and on the editorial board of Terrain.org. He is co-director of the online workshop Writing the Wild, and his work is deposited in the Sowell Family Archives at Texas Tech University. Drew is a 2022 MacArthur Fellow living on a 46-acre farm in the Dark Corner of South Carolina, where he claims a mission of “cultivating words and wildness.” His most recent work, Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves (Hub City, 2024), is a lyrical treatment on deep ornithology, redefining wildness, and pushing “good trouble” past narrowed minds while celebrating his intensely Southern rural Blackness. Drew’s favorite birds are the wild ones with feathers.
