Hometown: Sonoma, CA
Website: http://beccalawton.com/
Dates in Sitka: 2011-09
Rebecca Lawton is a California natural scientist and writer whose passion is exploring and writing about the outdoor world. Her work has been published in Orion, Sierra, The San Francisco Chronicle Magazine, Shenandoah, Standing Wave, and other magazines. Her literary honors include the Ellen Meloy Fund Award for Desert Writers and three Pushcart Prize nominations for fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.
For many years she was a whitewater guide in the West, including ten seasons on the Colorado in Grand Canyon. Her memoir Reading Water: Lessons from the River was aSan Francisco Chronicle Bay Area Bestseller and ForeWord Nature Book of the Year finalist. She co-authored three additional works of nonfiction on creativity and the outdoors. Her scientific work has focused on the movement of sediment and water. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Mills College, and a B.S. in Earth Sciences from UC Santa Cruz.