About

I'm the author of three books of nonfiction, most recently Brave the Wild River (WW Norton, 2023), winner of a Reading the West Award and National Outdoor Book Award. My work has appeared in the New York Times, High Country News, Orion, Literary Hub, and elsewhere. I volunteer as the interviews editor for the online environmental journal Terrain.org. My work focuses on science and nature with an emphasis on the American West.

Featured Work

Brave the Wild River

2023
The cover of a book called Brave the Wild River. The center section with the title is green with white text. The upper half has a black and white photo of two women on a boat. The bottom half is a painting of the Grand Canyon.

Brave the Wild River, by science journalist Melissa L. Sevigny, is an evocative and beautifully written chronicle of botanists Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter’s history-making journey through the Grand Canyon in the summer of 1938. Driven by boundless curiosity and determination, Clover and Jotter set out with an ambitious but relatively inexperienced expedition leader and three amateur boatmen, eager to “botanize” the beautiful and bizarre plant life of this little-known corner of the American West. Brave the Wild River is a loving tribute to two remarkable women—who valued their curiosity about the world more than their presumed place in it—and the adventure of a lifetime.

Other Works