From Kim
My most recent book, Sensational: The Hidden History of America's "Girl Stunt Reporters," highlights female undercover journalists who exposed the rot at the heart of the Gilded Age. Based on an article that appeared in Smithsonian’s Secrets of American History issue, it was published by HarperCollins in April 2021. Earlier books include Sparrow; Chrysalis: Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis; and Tinkering with Eden: A Natural History of Exotic Species in America.
I love disappearing into large book projects, but I also write essays and articles on topics ranging from the nature of curiosity, to the developing science of reintroduction biology, to the evolving songs of urban sparrows, to lessons from the longest running predator-prey study in the world. The on-the-ground implications of the stories we tell about animals are a long-term interest. My work has appeared in Orion, Sierra Magazine, Smithsonian, High Country News, and Best American Science and Nature Writing anthologies, among other places. I have given talks at the Harvard Museum of Natural History, the New England Aquarium, the Getty Museum, the Commonwealth Club, Yale University, Bowdoin College, Wellesley College, the University of California (Davis), and many other venues.
Raised in California, educated in Montana, after moving from coast to coast and landing many places in between, I now live with my family in Minneapolis. Here in the Twin Cities I am a nonfiction faculty member at the MFA program at the University of Minnesota where I get to help some of the most exciting new writers in the country hone their craft; I am also a Fellow with the Institute on the Environment. When not writing or teaching, I spend time hiking or kayaking whatever trails and rivers I can find."
