Melissa Sevigny

@melissasevigny.bsky.social

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Science journalist in Flagstaff, Arizona. Author of Brave the Wild River (WW Norton, 2023), Mythical River, and Under Desert Skies. I write about science, nature, rivers, space. Trekkie! www.melissasevigny.com

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Sooo excited for this Q&A with #SciFriBookClub tomorrow (Thursday). Bring your questions - we'll talk about botany, river running, national parks, and kickass science heroines! 🧪🌎💙📚 www.sciencefriday.com/sf-books/bra...

If you're interested in birds, check out this interview I did with Priyanka Kumar, author of CONVERSATIONS WITH BIRDS - we talk about the perils of lists and using devices to call birds, the joys of a flip phone, and how to cultivate the art of paying attention. 🪶🌎 www.terrain.org/2024/intervi...

Nature Offers Us a Counterpoint: An Interview with Priyanka Kumarwww.terrain.org Birds had magically and mysteriously imbued my life with rasa. Birds essentially became my community. Introduction hen the universe gives us a bird,” writes Priyanka Kumar, “we should accept it with...

Just one day left to enter for a free copy of my book! YOU KNOW YOU NEED MORE BOOKS! 💙📚 #SciFriBookClub www.sciencefriday.com/scifri-book-...

The SciFri Book Club, from Science Fridaywww.sciencefriday.com A monthly book club to bring people together around all things science reading, from the people who bring you Science Friday

OMG, such a thrill to hear my book BRAVE THE WILD RIVER plugged on @scifri.bsky.social just now. It's the July pick for #SciFriBookClub, and you can enter for a free book over on their website: www.sciencefriday.com/sf-books/bra... Hope to see some of you on the livestream Q&A on July 18. 🧪🌎💙📚

Read 'Brave the Wild River' With The SciFri Book Clubwww.sciencefriday.com Set off down the Colorado River with Melissa L. Sevigny's book, which tells two women's journey to document the canyon's unique botany.

My kind hosts at Sundance Nature Alliance asked if I wanted a free spa day, and I blurted out in a panic, "I'd rather go hiking!" So here I am, sitting by a waterfall. Best spa day ever. (And yes, Utah really has water like this!)

Spotted half a dozen bull elk on my afternoon walk today. Weird fact: they aren't native to Arizona! The native Merriam's elk was hunting into extinction, so Rocky Mountain elk from Yellowstone National Park were shipped in by train in the early 1900s. Always a treat to see them. 🌎

So excited to win the Reading the West award for my book BRAVE THE WILD RIVER - chosen by readers and independent booksellers in the memoir/biography category. There are absolutely amazing books on this list, past and present. Here's the award ceremony.💙📚 www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgwI...

Reading the West 34th Annual Awards Presentationwww.youtube.com Independent bookseller across the American West present the awards for the 34th annual Reading the West Book Awards

I wrote about imposter syndrome, invasive grass, and my very first whitewater rafting trip for National Parks Magazine. Give it a read! 🌎 www.npca.org/articles/379...

Weeding the Grand Canyonwww.npca.org The search for an invasive plant, ghosts of the past and belonging on a journey downriver.

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Last night I finished Brave the Wild River by @melissasevigny.bsky.social It’s about the women who were the first to map the botany of the Grand Canyon by also becoming the first women successfully down the river. I found it a beautiful portal into the time and the science.

Exploring the U of Michigan Biological Station at Douglas Lake this week, and got a boat ride/aquatic plant lesson this afternoon. This is bladderwort - it traps and eats bugs! It's a keystone predator in lakes! Isn't that WILD?!🧪🌎

I found the place where they make Christmas and magic and rainbows and everything good.

My book BRAVE THE WILD RIVER is on the regional indie bestseller lists for Northern California and the Pacific Northwest! Yay - thanks for the love! 💙📚

Creative-types in my feed, how do you refill your creative well when you're tired/overwhelmed and have too many things on your to-do list? Hoping for suggestions beyond self-care - regular practices that help you recover from stress!

My paperback of BRAVE THE WILD RIVER is out today! So exciting to see this book about science, botany, and #WomeninSTEM make its way in the world. 💙📚🧪🌱🌎 "A marvelous and informative read" - Science "[A] cascade of a story, colored by sun and water and driven by determination" - New York Times

Excited that BRAVE THE WILD RIVER is on the shortlist for the Reading the West awards, alongside many other amazing books! Voting is open now. #womeninstem 💙🧪 readingthewest.com/34th-annual-...

A shot in the dark, but are there any science folks here who study lightning from a historical/cultural perspective? I have a question about early 20th-century ideas of what would attract or repel lightning, what's valid and what's myth.... 🧪👩‍🔬

Because you all need a glowing drop of sunshine in your day 👇👇👇

Allen’s hummingbird 🪶 📷 Claremont Canyon

There's really nothing like getting a box marked BOOKS in the mail, and having it be full of YOUR books! These are my paperbacks, just arrived from W.W. Norton. It's a story about science, botany, #WomeninSTEM, and a 1938 river adventure. Pre-orders available now! 💙📚 wwnorton.com/books/978039...

Excited to be speaking today about women and wilderness at the LA Times Festival of Books. 💙📚

Reposted by

Melissa Sevigny

I’m on LitHub today talking about the historical defeminization of botany as it became a formal science. This is an excerpt from my book Unrooted, which is out this week. 🌾👩🏼‍🔬🧪

How Lydia Ernestine Becker Was Once Central to—Then Excluded from—the Study of Botanylithub.com Botany has a long history of not holding space for women, and even pushing them out when it becomes expedient to do so. During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, women were very mu…

I'll be at the LA Times Festival of Books next weekend, speaking on a panel about Women & Wilderness. Tickets for the event (Sunday April 21 at 11am) are on sale today! #WomeninSTEM 💙📚 events.latimes.com/festivalofbo...

I think this was my favorite eclipse moment... I wandered over to a nearby tree to check the crescent-shaped shadows, and ended up showing a gaggle of excited strangers how to use a pinhole camera to project the eclipse on the ground. "The sun is really disappearing!" one of them kept saying.🧪

"An example of celestial poetic disruption, where suddenly you see the sun, this orb that’s in the sky everyday, in a totally new light, quite literally." - Actor Misha Collins speaking about the experience of a total solar eclipse from Waco, TX, today.

Me talking to actor and astronomy enthusiast Misha Collins about the sublime experience of a eclipse. Sunny skies in the end in Waco!

"She struggles to work under a sterile air hood because the hard edge of the counter can’t accommodate her growing belly." Review of forthcoming book UNROOTED, about botany, motherhood, and sexism in science. 🧪🌱💙📚

Last week's blog post was a review of @doctorzedd.bsky.social's new book, UNROOTED. watershednotes.ca/2024/03/27/b... Tomorrow's blog post is a meditation on mountains.

Book Review: Unrooted, by Erin Zimmermanwatershednotes.ca (Note: Erin is a friend so my review may not be entirely unbiased) Erin Zimmerman completed a PhD at the Université de Montréal in evolutionary biology. She followed this up with a postdoctoral pos...

Friends, I'm super excited to run Cataract Canyon in September with Holiday River Expeditions -- you can sign up for an adventure and lively conversations about botany, science, history, and nature writing. 💙📚 Plus, we'll brave some rapids together! www.bikeraft.com/specialty-ri...

Author Spotlight: Float Cataract Canyon with Melissa Sevignywww.bikeraft.com Join acclaimed author Melissa Sevigny and Holiday for this special river trip down the Green River and through Cataract Canyon!

Make room for meeeee! 🪶

An embarrassment of finches this morning. 🪶

Randomly ran across this article about restoring beavers - from 1927! 🌎 @bengoldfarb.bsky.social thought you'd enjoy.

Poor guy. He's just gonna park in the birdfeeder while he figures out why all these cold feathers are falling from the sky. 🪶