Kent Nelson

Kent Nelson is the author of four novels and six short story collections. His work has earned wide acclaim, including the Colorado Book Award and the Mountains and Plains Booksellers Award for Land That Moves, Land That Stands Still, the Edward Abbey Prize for Ecofiction for Language in the Blood, and the prestigious Drue Heinz Literature Prize for The Spirit Bird. His fiction, often shaped by place and environmental and social themes, has appeared in The Best American Short Stories, Pushcart, and The O. Henry Awards, as well as in many other anthologies and one hundred and sixty magazines. A Yale graduate and Harvard-trained environmental lawyer, Nelson has also worked as a doorman, dishwasher, tennis pro, innkeeper, city judge, ad salesman, and hired man on an alfalfa ranch—experiences that have informed his characters and landscapes. He has also traveled all over North America, including Attu, the last Aleutian Island, in search of birds, which has contributed to his extensive knowledge of landscapes in which to set his fiction. His bird list in North America is 771 species. Nelson was ranked 6th in the U.S. in squash, captained of the Yale tennis team, played varsity ice hockey, and was a pro tennis player in Germany. He has also run five marathons including L.A., Anchorage, Taos, and the Pikes Peak marathon twice. He lives and writes in the mountain town of Ouray, Colorado.