Gretel Ehrlich is a nature writer, novelist, essayist, and poet raised on a horse ranch in California. After working in film for 10 years, she began writing full-time while living on a Wyoming ranch in 1978. Her first of multiple books, The Solace of Open Spaces, is a collection of essays describing her love of the region. Ehrlich’s work has been widely published, including in Harper’s, The Atlantic, Life, Time, and The New York Times Magazine. She served as a correspondent for NPR’s Day to Day and has reported from Kosovo, the Arctic, and Africa. Among her awards are the 2010 PEN Thoreau Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Whiting Award, and an award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts, and two Expedition Council Grants from the National Geographic Society for circumpolar travel in the high Arctic. Her latest work, Unsolaced, examines her adventures in nature around the world and provides meaningful insight on a changing climate.
2022 Cowgirl Honoree – Colorado
