Paul Bogard
Paul Bogard is an associate professor in the English department where he teaches courses in First Year Writing, Creative Writing, and Literature with a focus on the environment. Before coming to Hamline, Paul taught at Northland College (Ashland, Wisconsin), Wake Forest University (Winston-Salem, North Carolina), and James Madison University (Harrisonburg, Virginia). Paul holds a BA in Religion from Carleton College, an MA in English/creative writing from the University of New Mexico, and a PhD in English/Literature and Environment from the University of Nevada, Reno.
Paul’s books include The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light (Little, Brown), The Ground Beneath Us: from the Oldest Cities to the Last Wilderness, What Dirt Tells Us About Who We Are (Little, Brown), and the children’s picture book What if Night? (Keystone Canyon P). He is the editor of Let There Be Night: Testimony on Behalf of the Dark (U of Nevada P). His writing has appeared in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Slate, Salon, Outside, Audubon, Conservation, Reader’s Digest, National Geographic, Creative Nonfiction, and elsewhere.
I believe that college isn’t only about earning a degree so that you can “get a job” so that you can “make money” in order to buy “stuff.” As important as employment and income and possessions may be, they are hardly the only aspects of a meaningful life. College is—or, ought to be—a time when you are asked to contemplate the life you will live and to engage with eternal questions about love and death and beauty and sorrow and gratitude and responsibility to yourself, to others, to the rest of creation. This kind of contemplation and questioning is exactly the work you will be asked to do in my classes and exactly the work that will fuel your writing. I look forward to meeting you.
The End of Night
Little, Brown and Company, 2013
Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light
- "A lyrical, far-reaching book. Part elegy, part call-to-arms, The End of Night feels like an essential addition to the literature of nature." —The Boston Globe
- "A moving, poetic, immersive, multifaceted, and thought-provoking study... Terrific." —Publishers Weekly
- "[Bogard] offers delightful insights from experts on the activities of nature during the night.... Bogard will leave readers in awe of darkness and in admiration of his book." —Library Journal (starred review)
Solastalgia
University of Virginia Press, 2023
An Anthology of Emotion in a Disappearing World (Edited by Paul Bogard)
- "It’s brave to write into the vastness of our climate crisis and still understand the role of celebration. These authors offer the full complexity of what it means to love a place while it’s being forever shifted." —Toni Jensen
Let There Be Night
University of Nevada Press, 2008
Testimony on Behalf of the Dark
- "This collection makes a unique contribution to environmental writing. This is simply a wonderful idea for an anthology, and the writing is vibrant and insightful.” —Bradley John Monsma, author of The Sespe Wild: Southern California’s Last Free River
- “Let There Be Night celebrates the gifts of darkness and mourns the loss of dark skies to light pollution. These fine essays reopen us to the dark, where we learn courage and remember wonder.” —Stephen Trimble, author of The Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basin
The Ground Beneath Us
Little, Brown and Company, 2017
From the Oldest Cities to the Last Wilderness, What Dirt Tells Us About Who We Are
- “A beautiful call for deeper physical, intellectual, and emotional connections between people and Earth." —David George Haskell
- "An intriguing examination of the ground, which “holds the wild world in place." —Kirkus Review
To Know a Starry Night
University of Nevada Press, 2021
- “Paul Bogard is the unofficial poet laureate of dark skies. This is a terrific work.” —Christopher Cokinos
- “A beautiful testament to how much of ourselves we lose as our city lights obscure the stars." —Dr. Tyler Nordgren, astronomer and artist
- “Paul Bogard brings attention to what we have lost, how our night skies are fading and growing dimmer over time, and how we can strive to protect our starry nights.” —Roberta Moore, co-editor of Wild Nevada
What if Night?
Illustrated by Sarah Holden (picture book); Keystone Canyon Press, 2021
With the night sky over most cities now nearly 100 times brighter than in the last century, children are missing out on the experience of the natural darkness. This charming story, along with stunning watercolors of night sky and wildlife, presents the thrill and wonder of a child exploring darkness without fear.
