As you may know, Kathleen Jamie, the author of Sightlines, was this year’s recipient of the John Burroughs Medal for excellence in natural history writing. Kathleen traveled to New York from her home in Scotland to receive the Medal at the annual celebratory lunch hosted by the John Burroughs Association at the American Museum of Natural History this past Monday, April 4.

Kathleen Jamie (left) with Jan DeBlieu

Kathleen was introduced by Jan DeBlieu, the 1999 Medal award winner, and spoke briefly about nature writing—saying that she considers her essays long form poems, rather than her poems truncated novels—and how when nature writing as a genre practically died in the UK until a few years ago, she and other UK writers turned to American writers like Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez.

On Wednesday, Kathleen joined us in The Experiment office—the first time any of us met the Scottish author!—for some pizza and pie. It was a pleasure meeting and getting to know her, and we hope there will be many more occasions to bring Kathleen back to New York!

Kathleen Jamie and (most of!) The Experiment team