Inspiration

Ellen Meloy

Jun 21, 1946 - Nov 4, 2004

American Nature Writer

Ellen Meloy's Inspiration

Her exquisite prose and insight into the American West.

About Ellen Meloy

Ellen Meloy was a naturalist and nonfiction writer. Using the Southwest as the setting and subject for what she referred to as “land-based literature, Meloy wrote four books, all collections of essays, primarily about the vitality and intrinsicness of human connections to wilderness, wildlife, and rivers. With her uniquely humorous and poetic prose style, her 2005 book, “Eating Stone: Imagination and the Loss of the Wild” details a year spent following a group of desert bighorn sheep she called “The Blue Door Band”. Her 2002 book “Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit” was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. She died unexpectedly of natural causes at her home in Red Bluff, Utah on November 4, 2004