Paula Whyman’s new book, BAD NATURALIST: One Woman’s Ecological Education on a Wild Virginia Mountaintop, is forthcoming from Timber Press. It’s a combination memoir, natural history, and chronicle of her attempts to restore retired farmland to natural habitat. Her first book, the linked short story collection YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER, won praise from The New Yorker, a starred review in Publishers Weekly, and the Towson Prize for Literature. Whyman was selected for “Best of 2016” lists including Chicago Review of Books and the first-ever Poets & Writers Magazine “5 Over 50” list. Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s Quarterly, Ploughshares, VQR, The Hudson Review, The Washington Post, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. She is a fellow of MacDowell, Yaddo, VCCA, and The Studios of Key West, and vice president of the MacDowell Fellows Executive Committee. She was recently awarded a 2022 Creativity Grant by the Maryland State Arts Council to support work on Mad Land. Whyman is co-founder and editor in chief of the online literary journal, Scoundrel Time.