ABOUT

Rochelle Johnson is a writer, teacher, editor, and scholar of natural history and the environmental humanities.

After graduating from Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, she migrated from east to west and from birch to aspen. While at Claremont Graduate University, she studied American literature and environmental history, earning her MA and PhD. Now a professor of Environmental Studies, Rochelle holds the Bernie McCain Chair in the Humanities at the College of Idaho. Her courses focus on American natural history, museums and material culture, writing, and interdisciplinary environmental studies. She also teaches for the Bread Loaf School of English graduate program and Osher Lifelong Learning Institute. Rochelle is a recipient of the Carnegie Foundation’s “Idaho Professor of the Year” award.

Active in national professional service, Rochelle is Immediate Past President of the Thoreau Society, chairs the award committee for the Thoreau Prize in Literary Nature Writing, and is a past president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE). She has served additional professional organizations and boards, including the Board of Directors of the Orma J. Smith Museum of Natural History. Rochelle’s work appears in books, anthologies, journals, and documentary films. She leads workshops, addresses public and academic audiences both at home and abroad, and provides developmental/editorial services to emerging writers.

A child of the forests and meadows of New England, Rochelle now makes her home in the stunning sage-brush steppe of southwest Idaho, where she lives with her actor/teacher/dialect coach husband, Joe Golden, and their daughters.