Short Bio: E. A . Greenwell is a writer and practitioner of connectivity. He has supported or led successful efforts to protect habitat, farms, and ranches in wildlife corridors, establish community forests, restore Indigenous access to homelands, and facilitate formal land-management partnerships between tribes, federal and state agencies, counties, and NGOs. He is a senior connectivity specialist for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative and the program manager of writing for the Centrum Foundation. A former PEN/Northwest Wilderness Writing Resident, his work has appeared in the pages of Boston Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, and Terrain.org among other publications.
Long Bio: E. A. Greenwell grew up on the banks of the Mississippi River in big ag and big box country, where neighbors joked there were bars or churches on every corner.
After leaving the Midwest, he crossed the mountains and valleys of big sky country and the American West to earn an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Idaho in Moscow, where he also received an Academy of American Poets Prize as well as Writing in the Wild and Port Townsend Writers' Conference fellowships. While working on his M.F.A., he divided his time between the classroom, St. Joe National Forest, the Bitterroot Mountains, and the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness through a unique series of partnerships between English, natural resources, and natural science departments. He also worked with mentors Alexandra Teague, Robert Wrigley, and Daniel Orozco and served as the editor-in-chief of the periodical, fugue, where he established in partnership with the University of Idaho Library’s Digital Initiatives Department and the poet Devin Becker fugue’s online digital archive, making free and accessible work from oeuvres of some of America's most celebrated writers: Natasha Trethaway, W. S. Merwin, Terrance Hayes, Sharon Olds, Anthony Doer, and many more.
From March 2016 - June 2017 he lived with his partner, Belinda Boden, on a remote and primitive homestead in the Rogue River Wilderness as a caretaker and the PEN/Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident. There, his admiration for biodiversity and evolution moved him to seek an active role in harmonizing the conservation of landscapes, native ecosystems, and ways of life for future generations.
He currently lives with Belinda in Milltown, Montana, where he works for the Yellowstone to Yukon Conservation Initiative (Y2Y) and Centrum Foundation. He continues to write, and his writing has appeared in several periodicals and publications, including Moss, Adirondack Review, Boston Review, Iron Horse Literary Review, Oakland Review, Quiddity, Terrain.org, and Northwest River Supplies, Inc.’s Duct Tape Diaries.