News & Events

Bad Naturalist News & Reviews

Bad Naturalist is a 2026 Library of Virginia People’s Choice Award Nonfiction finalist! Finalists are the books most requested by library patrons in the preceding year. Winners will be chosen based on votes–anyone can vote!

Bad Naturalist has been named a 2026 Reed Environmental Writing Award Finalist! The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) says the Reed Award “celebrates writers who achieve both literary excellence and offer extraordinary insight into the South’s natural treasures and environmental challenges.” Awards are given to one nonfiction book and one work of journalism. Winners will be announced in February 2026.

I talked with Margaret Roach, New York Times columnist, on her podcast, A Way to Garden, about my attempts to restore native meadows on a mountain, “managing” invasive plants, and what I learned along the way.

I’m featured on The Joe Gardener Show podcast, talking with Joe about native plants, invasive plants, and what it’s like to form a connection with the land.

Virginia NPR-affiliate WVTF interview with reporter Roxy Todd: “Author writes about trying to grow native plants on her Blue Ridge mountaintop.” This interview also appeared on WMRA and the Virginia Public Radio blog.

Garden & Gun Magazine featured this fun interview “In Bad Naturalist, a Virginia Writer Gets a Humbling Crash Course in Ecology: Paula Whyman dreamed of restoring a plot of land in the Blue Ridge Mountains—and found fertile ground for a memoir” by Lindsey Liles. “I remembered my dad accidentally setting fire to a crabapple tree and asked myself, How does this tie to the prescribed fire on the mountain I’m writing about?”

The Washington Post has published a feature, “Why a ‘Bad Gardener’ Spent Four Years Restoring a Meadow: Author Paula Whyman’s dream of a modest ecological project took a wild turn on a Virginia mountain,” about the mountain project I’m doing that is chronicled in the book. The story is by Ashley Stimpson, with photos by Matt McClain.

Modern Farmer has published an excerpt from Bad Naturalist!

I was featured on a RadioFrance/France Inter program, “L’ecrivaine qui voulait reensauvager sa montagne” [“The writer who wants to rewild her mountain”].

I spoke with host Marcus Smith for BYU radio’s Constant Wonder program.

I was interviewed by Ann Wallace and Kim Correro for their Wildstory podcast.

I was interviewed on The Lifestyles Show, Talk Radio Europe (TRE), Malaga, Spain (live)

I was interviewed on The Morning Show with Marcia Macomber, KSVY Radio, Sonoma, CA (live)

I’m featured on Big Blend Radio’s Nature Connection podcast, with hosts Lisa Smith and Nancy Reid.

I talk with host Kate Hanley about my approach to writing, and what brought me to this project, for a 3-part series on her podcast Finding the Throughline.

An excerpt from Bad Naturalist appears in the February 2025 issue of The Writer’s Chronicle.

The Rappahannock News published an interview by Beverly Jones, along with an excerpt.

I’m featured on an episode of the Simply ReWilding podcast called “Rewilding the Blue Ridge.”

I appeared on a segment of ABC-TV/WJLA’s Good Morning Washington, a DC metro area morning show.

Shelf Awareness reviews Bad Naturalist! “Bad Naturalist is a fascinating look at how human activity shapes landscapes, and a call to be flexible and diligent in caring for them… Paula Whyman’s wry, well-researched memoir charts her efforts to care for a plot of land in Virginia and reflects on the interdependence between people and place.”

I’m featured in the 500th episode of Mitch Ratcliffe’s Earth911 podcast. “Paula’s book reflects on the connection between our internal lives and the landscapes we inhabit…”

Author Leslie Pietrzyk interviewed me for her TBR (To Be Read) column, now up at her “Work in Progress in Progress” blog. “Both the project and the writing involved a lot of uncertainty, a lot of waiting, a lot of trial and error.” The interview also appears in South 85 Journal, a literary journal of the Converse University MFA program.

Bad Naturalist is featured in the Radio Nemo “Sleeper Cab Library,”  following my appearance with hosts Lindsay Lawler and Jimmy Mac on the Dave Nemo Weekend Show at Sirius XM channel 146.

I spoke with reporter Cathy Alter for “An Interview with Paula Whyman: The memoirist talks environmentalism for the rest of us,” now up at Washington Independent Review of Books. “When I started the mountaintop restoration, I was working on a novel. I can’t even tell you right now what that novel was about…”

The Reformation of a Bad Naturalist (episode 224), my conversation with Kathy Jentz, editor of Washington Gardener magazine, is now up on the GardenDC podcast.

My conversation about writing memoir and restoring a mountaintop with host Ronit Plank is now out on her podcast Let’s Talk Memoir, episode 143, “Attention, Selectivity, and Deep Curiosity.” “Writing for me is a place where I can ask questions, and no one is going to tell me to shut up.”

I talked with host Francesca Rheannon on her podcast Writer’s Voice, in an episode from January 10 about “Stewarding Wildness.” “The kind of human interference that’s good is managing for the plants that will help the local ecosystem.”

I talked with Rodger Wasson on his Farm to Table Talk podcast in an episode called “Good Natured.”

I talked with Catherine Greenleaf, former gardening editor for the Sunday Boston Herald, for episode 122 of her Bird Hugger podcast.

I talked with Ron Van Dam, the Ron Van Dam Show, for episode 2,163, “Getting Away From Society,” and, by the way, Ron thinks my book should be a streaming series.

Here’s my conversation with celebrity chef Maria Liberati for her Maria Liberati Show, about “living naturally.”

The Charlottesville, VA, independent weekly, C-ville, featured Bad Naturalist in a recent piece, “An Author’s Experiment to See What Grows.” “As much as Bad Naturalist is a tale of Whyman’s efforts to improve the land, it is also a personal chronicle that brings attention to, and vocabulary for, her new surroundings.”

Washingtonian Magazine ran a fun piece by Sylvie McNamara in the January issue –“Paula Whyman’s New Book Is About an Ecology Project from Hell”: “In her new memoir, Bad Naturalist, Whyman describes the unrelenting labor of stewarding her meadow….”

Publishers Weekly calls Bad Naturalist “charming” and “enchanting”:  “This charming memoir finds short story writer Whyman (You May See a Stranger) recounting how she attempted to restore a 200-acre former cow pasture in Virginia’s Blue Ridge Mountains to its natural state…. An enchanting complement to Isabella Tree’s Wilding.”

Bad Naturalist is reviewed in Washington Gardener’s November issue! “Glorious….perhaps Whyman’s greatest success is that with this delightful book she distills useful practices for other landowners, as well as the importance for doing what she did.”

Bad Naturalist is reviewed in Booklist! “Albeit a cautionary tale, Whyman’s sprightly memoir of her super-sized endeavor provides valuable insight for like-minded gardeners, no matter how large or small their project.”

“Tunneling for Daylight,” an essay about my encounters with carpenter bees during an artist residency, appears in The American Scholar, Winter 2024 issue.

2024 artist residency and grant, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, to support work on Bad Naturalist. Oak Spring Garden is the estate of the late Rachel “Bunny” and Paul Mellon. They are dedicated to “support and inspire fresh thinking and bold action on the history and future of plants.”

My letter to the editor appeared in the Washington Post: “Opinion: Gardens–and wildlife–do better with native plants,” Letters to the Editor, Washington Post Opinion, June 26, 2023
“…the plants that do well in a specific patch of unimproved soil are the ones that evolved over thousands of years to grow there…”

2023 interdisciplinary artist residency and grant, Oak Spring Garden Foundation.

2022 Creativity Grant, Maryland State Arts Council to support work on Bad Naturalist.

VCCA Fellowships in Fall 2022 and Summer 2023 to support work on Bad Naturalist.

 

You May See a Stranger Book News

YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER has won the 2017 Towson Prize for Literature: Established in 1979 with a grant from Alice and Franklin Cooley, awarded annually for a book of fiction, poetry, drama, or creative nonfiction by a Maryland writer, on the basis of literary and aesthetic excellence as determined by a panel of distinguished judges appointed by the university. The first award, made in the fall of 1980, went to novelist Anne Tyler.

I’m interviewed in Grub Street, in association with the Towson Prize. Nonfiction editor James Hancock says You May See a Stranger is an “impressive example of a collection of stories that manages to continuously build on itself,” in which the protagonist goes through “not just one, but multiple arcs in a natural progression through the course of her life.”

I judged the 2018 Hollins University MFA Melanie Hook Rice Award in the Novel.

In 2017, I was a judge for the 2017 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and the 2017 F. Scott Fitzgerald Short Story Contest.

My book is praised in The New Yorker’s Briefly Noted column: “A delicate balance of mundane moments and acute ones, often depicting instances “in which everything seems, not perfect but imperfectly right.” … [D]eftly layers harshness over ostensibly happy events.” 

My book is a Chicago Review of Books “Best of 2016” selection: “[A] unique new voice in fiction” and the reviewer’s favorite short story collection of the year.

My book is selected for Large-Hearted Boy’s “Favorite short story collections of 2016.”

I’m picked for “35 Over 35,” debut books by authors over age 35.

My book was named one of five favorites of 2016 by Gulf Coast fiction editor, Corey Campbell, as part of the Gulf Coast Editors’ “Best of 2016” list!

Bloom named my book in its “Best Best-Of’s” list–their year-end list, distilled from other “best of” book lists around the web.

Publishers Weekly starred review for YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER: “Whyman’s debut is an honest and sharply observed linked story collection spanning the life of Miranda Weber from her teens through her late 40s. . . Themes of love, sex, politics, and family run through the collection, and every detail has satisfying echoes later on. Together, these smart, artful stories capture a woman’s life and the moments that define her.”

My book is praised in this thoughtful review from New Pages as “hauntingly universal” and “soul-stirring.”

I’m featured in Poets & Writers Magazine’s “5 Over 50,” the first-ever round-up of older debut authors,  An excerpt from YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER can be found in online exclusives, and the November/December 2016 print edition includes my essay on, uh, what took me so long.

My book is recommended by Bill Goldstein on Bill’s Books: Hot Summer Reads, NBC-NY! “The way the past and present resonate in [Miranda’s] mind is beautifully done.”

Up now on The Story Prize blog, my guidelines for writing sex scenes.

I’m interviewed for the terrific Oregon-based site, Late Night Library. Interviewer Corinne Gould says of the way the stories follow a single narrator throughout, “this novelistic form suits the protagonist’s evolution beautifully.” The interview includes an excerpt from one of the stories, “Bad Side In.”

I’m featured on novelist James Scott’s TK Podcast series along with Daniel Menaker, my literary agent, who tells tales out of school about editing Alice Munro while at The New Yorker.

I’m interviewed in The Rumpus by Ann Ryles, who calls YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER “intimate, wrenching, funny, and sexy.”

Michele Filgate interviews me for Electric Literature, in an extension of our conversation from my New York launch at Book Culture.

I’m interviewed on video for the award-winning high school newspaper, The Black & White, by student journalist Ava Chenok. The Black & White is published by Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda, MD.

This just in from Midwest Book Review’s Clint Travis:  YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER is “a deftly crafted series of consistently compelling tales from first page to last…Clearly documents Paula Whyman’s total mastery of the short story format.” Travis recommends the book “very highly” for “community and academic library literary fiction collections.”

I’m interviewed by American University about linked stories, MFA programs, and the 5 books that inspired me. This fall, I’ll be part of American’s 2016-2017 Visiting Writer Series.

I’m interviewed for Chicago Review of Books by Rachel Leon, who calls YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER “funny as hell.”

I’m interviewed by Martha Frankel for Woodstock Writers Radio, Episode 94, on Radio Woodstock 100.1, Woodstock, NY. Martha says YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER is about an American woman “trying to do the right thing in the wrong ways.”

I’m interviewed by Martha Willette Lewis for WPKN Radio’s Live Culture. We talk about female protagonists behaving badly, sibling relationships, and how linked stories work. The broadcast includes songs featured in my book. Listen to the archived broadcast of Episode 16 here. The program was recorded in Bryant Park, NY, and aired on June 25, 2016.

I’m interviewed in the Shelf Awareness Book Brahmin column.

Now up at The Barnes & Noble Review, Grin & Tonic: My new humor piece, “Topic Assignment.” Essay “ideas” to promote my new book.

A review from Full Stop: “[T]hought-provoking in a truly adult manner most literary works are not: provocative but pensive, hilarious but heartbreaking.”

I’m interviewed today in Salon by Teddy Wayne, along with Curtis Sittenfeld, Geoff Dyer, Allison Amend, and Anton DiSclafani.

An excerpt from my book appears in Literary Hub!

I made a music playlist for my book for Large-Hearted Boy’s Book Notes column.

I’m interviewed for Fiction Writers Review by Melissa Scholes-Young.

I’m interviewed in BLOOM, about my book, bad jobs that make for good material, and what I did to procrastinate.

Announcing a new project: A music theater piece, “Transfigured Night,” based on a story in my debut collection, YOU MAY SEE A STRANGER, is now in development with composer Scott Wheeler.