Chris Bolgiano

Chris Bolgiano began freelancing on forestry and wildlife in 1980, shortly after she moved to 112 wooded acres in western Virginia. It seemed like destiny: born in Germany, her maiden name of Walder is the German plural for forests. Her day job then as a research librarian at James Madison University gave her access to immense information resources even before the digital age. Today, as Faculty Emerita, she can access a paralyzing amount of information from home.

Bolgiano's articles on nature and travel have been published in the New York Times, Washington Post, Islands, American Forests, Wilderness, Audubon, and many other magazines. Several of her six books, including The Appalachian Forest (1998), Living in the Appalachian Forest (2002), and Mighty Giants, An American Chestnut Anthology (2007), have won literary prizes. In 2014, her dwindling German came in handy when she was commissioned by the Society of American Foresters to join and write about SAF's tour to honor Carl Alvin Schenck. In 2015, two of her syndicated columns for the Bay Journal News Service won first and second prizes in the Virginia Outdoor Writers Association Excellence in Craft contest. Her essays appear in several anthologies, and she has given talks at venues ranging from an unnamed commune in North Carolina to the Virginia Festival of the Book. Most recently, she has begun to see trees as the pillars of carbon that could support the living world in the face of climate change.

Chris Bolgiano