writer, botanist, Susan Tweit on being a walking ecosystem, writing the deserts of the West

The Ground Shots Podcast

Susan Tweit is a plant biologist with a calling to restore nature and our connection with the community of the land especially close to home. Plants are her people, as she says, fascinated by the myriad ways they weave the world’s living communities, forming the green tapestry that covers this planet. Susan began her career as a field ecologist studying sagebrush, grizzly bears and wildfires. She reveled in the work and the time outside in the west’s expansive landscapes, but eventually realized she loved the stories in the data more than collecting those data. So, she learned how to tell those stories, not an easy trick for a scientist schooled in dispassionate and impersonal prose.

Susan and I met at the Paonia Books opening event in Paonia, Colorado in late fall 2022. During the event, we ended up getting into a conversation about plants by the hard cider sample table, and decided to try at some point to do an interview for the podcast. I was curious about Susan’s work as a writer and botanist, ecology scientist and was excited to dig deeper. We managed to meet up a few weeks later and recorded a conversation in Paonia Books’ back room where they hold writing workshops.

She has written a handful of books on a variety of themes. Some of her titles include ‘Barren, Wild and Worthless, Living in the Chihuahuan Desert,’ ‘The Rocky Mountain Garden Guide,’ and ‘Bless the Birds: Living with Love in a Time of Dying.’

read the blog post for the episode, here Links:

Susan’s website

Paonia Books

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