Philip Connors was raised on a farm in Minnesota, educated at the University of Montana, and disillusioned by a stint of corporate journalism in New York. In 2002 he became a fire lookout in New Mexico, where he has spent every summer since getting paid to look out the window. That experience became the subject of his first book, Fire Season: Field Notes From a Wilderness Lookout, which Amazon named the best nature book of the year in 2011. It won the National Outdoor Book Award, the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award, the Reading the West Award for nonfiction, and the Grand Prize from the Banff Mountain Book Competition. His essays have appeared in Harper's, the London Review of Books, the New York Times, the Paris Review, the Nation, and n+1, among many other outlets. His second book, All the Wrong Places, a memoir of life in the shadow of his brother's suicide, was published in 2015; his third book, A Song for the River (which Publishers Weekly said "belongs with the classics of the nature writing genre") is out now from the groovy folks at Cinco Puntos Press. He lives in the Mexican-American borderlands.
Selected Interviews
Seeking Comfort in All the Wrong Places — An interview with Dave Davies of NPR's Fresh Air
Lost and Found — A Q & A with Susan Dunlap for In the Fray
An Isolated Tower in the Gila National Forest — An interview with Spencer Beckwith of KUNM
Suicide Is Not Painless — An interview with Jeff Schechtman for the Podbean podcast
As Long as It Doesn't Make You Happy — A Q & A with Deborah Kalb for her books blog
On Fire Season — A Q & A with Maud Newton for the Paris Review Daily
Fire Lookouts, Kerouac, and Thinking Like a Mountain — A Q & A with Marianne Moore for Zyzzyva
LQ Podcast — A conversation with Elias Altman for Lapham's Quarterly
The Joys of Life in a Lookout Tower — An interview with Scott Simon of NPR's Weekend Edition
Seeking Comfort in All the Wrong Places — An interview with Dave Davies of NPR's Fresh Air
Lost and Found — A Q & A with Susan Dunlap for In the Fray
An Isolated Tower in the Gila National Forest — An interview with Spencer Beckwith of KUNM
Suicide Is Not Painless — An interview with Jeff Schechtman for the Podbean podcast
As Long as It Doesn't Make You Happy — A Q & A with Deborah Kalb for her books blog
On Fire Season — A Q & A with Maud Newton for the Paris Review Daily
Fire Lookouts, Kerouac, and Thinking Like a Mountain — A Q & A with Marianne Moore for Zyzzyva
LQ Podcast — A conversation with Elias Altman for Lapham's Quarterly
The Joys of Life in a Lookout Tower — An interview with Scott Simon of NPR's Weekend Edition