Lauret Edith Savoy’s life and work draw from her need to put the eroded world into language, to re–member fragmented pasts into present. A woman of African American, Euro-American, and Native American heritage, she explores the stories we tell of the American land’s origins—and the stories we tell of ourselves in this land. For her, writing of the complex intertwinings of natural and cultural histories is a way of seeking home among the ruins and shards that surround us all. The work is as necessary as breath. Dr. Savoy’s newest book is Trace: Memory, History, Race, and the American Landscape (Counterpoint Press), winner of the 2016 American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation and the 2017 ASLE Creative Writing Award. Trace was also a finalist for the PEN American Open Book Award and Phillis Wheatley Book Award, as well as shortlisted for the William Saroyan International Prize for Writing and the Orion Book Award. Dr. Savoy is the David B. Truman Professor of Environmental Studies at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, MA.

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