AUTHOR OF THE SLOW DISCIPLINES
Harper Whitfield observes the subtle dialogue between nature, memory, and the enduring human effort to truly see the world.
About
Harper Whitfield explores the intricate connections between human perception and the natural world, unveiling the quiet histories embedded within.
Dr. Harper Whitfield is an essayist and historian of science whose work traces the long human relationship with the natural world — how we have looked, how we have named, and what the essay form can still do that no other genre attempts.
A Guggenheim Fellow and the recipient of the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the art of the essay, her writing on nature, history, and science appears regularly in Harper's, The New York Review of Books, and Orion. She teaches literary nonfiction at Middlebury College.
Her newest book gathers a decade of essays on the slow disciplines: birdwatching, botany, and the archival history of scientific observation.
The Book
Her newest work invites readers into a profound meditation on observation, history, and the natural world.
Essays on nature, science, and the history of attention
From the field notebooks of nineteenth-century botanists to a modern dawn chorus in Vermont, The Slow Disciplines gathers a decade of essays on nature, history, and the quiet science of paying attention. A literary essay collection in the finest tradition — patient, exact, and steadily illuminating — from one of the essay form's most admired living practitioners.
Praise
Praise for Harper Whitfield's work suggests a singular voice in contemporary letters.
“Whitfield is our finest living essayist on the natural world. This collection belongs on the shelf beside Dillard and Berry.”
“A model of the literary essay: patient, exact, and quietly radical in its defense of attention itself.”
“Reading Whitfield feels like being handed a longer, better century.”
Speaking
To inquire about Harper Whitfield's availability for speaking engagements or literary events, please reach out.