Erica Berry is a writer based in her hometown of Portland, Oregon. She has an MFA from the University of Minnesota, where she was a College of Liberal Arts Fellow. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, New York Times Magazine, Yale Review, Outside Magazine, Catapult, Atlantic, Guernica and elsewhere. Winner of the Steinberg Essay Prize and the Kurt Brown Prize in non-fiction, she has received fellowships and funding from the Bread Loaf Writers Conference, Tin House, the Ucross Foundation, the Minnesota State Arts Board and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources. A former Writer-in-Residence with the National Writers Series in Traverse City, Michigan, she is currently a Writer-in-the-Schools with Literary Arts in Portland. @ericajberry | ericaberry.com
I devoured every startling, lyrical, haunting, yet all-too-familiar page of Wolfish. Such a stunning achievement, it left me feeling like one of the pack -- ELIZABETH RUSH, author of RISING, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Erica Berry's Wolfish is a marvel: a beautiful piece of work as wide-ranging as it is precise. Berry's keen eye and fresh, startling prose are not only an excellent guide to nature and the world around us, but also to what our reactions to the landscape tell us about ourselves ? what we fear and who we might become. You won't want to miss this -- V. V. GANESHANANTHAN, author of LOVE MARRIAGE, longlisted for the Women's Prize Elegant and elegiac, Wolfish asks how we live alongside, and honour, both the wilds we do such harm to and the fears that run wild within us. Erica Berry beautifully weaves literature, science, philosophy, history, and her own memories to deconstruct millenia of myth-making around wolves, urging a return to something even more powerful than the tales we've spun: untangling the creature from our fear, to better understand both it and ourselves. This is a book composed of what humanity has made, yes, but above all it's a gorgeous reminder that we, too, are part of nature -- ALEX MARZANO-LESNEVICH, author of THE FACT OF A BODY The space between humans and wolves is filled with stories, from fairy tales to family histories to our own fears and desires. With courage and insight, Erica Berry illuminates this tangled territory, inviting us to explore it for ourselves -- MICHELLE NIJHUIS, author of BELOVED BEASTS Wolfish starts with a single wolf and spirals through nuanced investigations of fear, gender, violence and story. A gorgeous achievement -- BLAIR BRAVERMAN, author of WELCOME TO THE GODDAMN ICE CUBE