J. Drew Lanham is a cultural ornithologist, naturalist, educator, and writer using robust science, artful essays, and evocative oratory to color the conservation conversation. He is the author of three books: The Home Place: Memoirs of a Colored Man’s Love Affair with Nature (2017); Sparrow Envy: Field Guide to Birds and Lesser Beasts (2021); and Joy is the Justice We Give Ourselves (2024). Among his honors, Lanham has received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant (2022), the Dan W. Lufkin Conservation Award from the National Audubon Society (2019), the Rosa Parks and Grace Lee Boggs Outstanding Service Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education (2016), the E. O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation from the Center for Biological Diversity (2020), and the Thoreau Award in 2024. He served as the Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina in 2022. Lanham is a Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University. He lives with his family on a farm in the upstate of South Carolina.