About Barbara “Barney” Nelson

In addition to books, since 1971 she has freelanced as both a writer and photographer for magazines such as Texas Monthly, RANGE Magazine (serving many years as Environmental Editor), The Cattleman, The Western Horseman Magazine, Persimmon Hill, Arabian Horse World Equus, Art West, Country People, Ranch Magazine, College Rodeo Magazine, Nevada Magazine, Texas Farmer-Stockman, Farm and Ranch Living, Horseman, The Quarter Horse Journal, Cowboy Magazine, Arabian Horse World, Horse and Rider, The Texas Hereford Journal, The American Hereford Journal, Southwest Hotel/Motel Review, Towns West, and others. In Europe: GEO, Meriam, L’Espresso. Her photographs have appeared on the covers of numerous horse and cattle magazines including Equus, Quarter Horse Journal, Texas Monthly, and The Cattleman.

Recent creative nonfiction essays appear in Pride of Place (Ed. David Taylor, U of N TX P, 2006), Writing on the Wind (Eds. Rodenberger, Butler and Kolosov, TX Tech U P, 2005), Heart Shots: Women Write About Hunting (Ed. Mary Stange, Stackpole, 2003), and Land and Water: Essays on Teaching Outdoors (Ed. Hal Crimmel, U of UT P, 2003). She has also published numerous popular press essays, photographs, and poetry in publications ranging from two chapters in I Wish I Could Give My Son a Wild Raccoon (Doubleday 1976), three essays in Cowboys Who Rode Proudly (Haley Memorial Library, 1992), and poetry in several anthologies of cowboy poetry.

Her scholarly essays appear in several collections: Teaching North American Environmental Literature (Eds. Waage, Christensen, and Long, MLA, 2008), Thoreau’s Sense of Place Ed. Richard J. Schneider (U of Iowa P, 2000); Exploring the Lost Borders (Eds. Graulich and Klimasmith, U of NV P, 1999); Coyote in the Maze: Critical Essays on Edward Abbey, Ed. Peter Quigley (U of UT P, 1998), and an essay about Gretel Ehrlich (V. 212, Dictionary of Literary Biography).

She served on national boards of directors for the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment and the Western Literature Association. She has been named to two halls of fame and is listed in numerous editions of Who’s Who Among America’s Teachers, Who’s Who in American Education, Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Women, International Writer of the Year, and Texas Women Writers.

She received a Ph.D. specializing in ecocriticism in 1997 from the University of Nevada, Reno. While at UNR she was co-director for the Seventh North American Interdisciplinary Wilderness Conference, served as Administrative Assistant for the Center for Environmental Arts and Humanities, Assistant Editor for The American Nature Writing Newsletter, Assistant Editor and on the Editorial Advisory Board for ISLE: Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and the Environment, and Managing Editor for the UNR alumni magazine. For many years she served as a peer reviewer for several university presses and professional journals. In January 2000, she co-directed an ASLE symposium on desert literature in Big Bend National Park with Walter Isle, Rice University.

A direct descendant of Mayflower Pilgrim, William Bradford, she likes to say that even though she owns only a few acres today, her family has been in the cattle business on this continent for thirteen generations.

For more complete information see my vita.