Nancy Sather is a native of northwestern Minnesota's prairie-forest border. She holds a BS in Philosophy and Biology (Beloit College, 1965), MS in Ecology (University of Minnesota,1980), and MFA in Creative Writing (Hamline University, 2003). Her interest in human perceptions of and interactions with the environment is the outgrowth of work as an extension teacher in Appalachan Kentucky in the late 1960s, her graduate study of paleoecology, and over two decades' field experiences as an ecologist with the Minnesota DNR. Her MFA capstone, Lipstone and Rubber Ice, is a memoir and landscape history of Minnesota's northern prairie-forest border. She has taught natural history at Metropolitan State University, interdisciplinary prairie studies in the Graduate Liberal Studies program at Hamline University, and nature writing at The Loft Literary Center. In addition to numerous technical reports on rare species and native plant communities; her poetry, essays, reviews, and short stories have been anthologized and published in a number of small literary magazines.

Her fellowship at the Center continues work begun in 2004 during a Residency at the Anderson Center for Interdisciplinary studies. The focus of this research is written descriptions of Minnesota's landscape prior to Euro-American settlement. Her work at the Center will result in chapters of an interpretive anthology of early Minnesota landscape descriptions for the prairie and prairie/parkland provinces, presenting chronological accounts arranged by ecological region.

"It is not that we have here a large number of peculiarly mountain plants, but rather that in their dwarfed habits of growth, nearly every species observed resembles the stunted and shrubby growth so familiar to everyone who has traveled over bare mountain heights"

E.P. Sheldon, Lake Benton, Minnesota, 1891

Public Presentation:

"Before the Plow"
Tuesday December 6, 2005 (12:00-1:00 p.m.) in SS 230
View lecture flyer

Read Nancy's work
Explore Minnesota landscape history