Southern Nature Writers: Writing and thinking about the southern landscape.

Dorinda G. Dallmeyer

Critical Description of Work:

This time, I will not have the voice of the wood thrush. This time, I will not know what the squirrel sees as she hurdles limbs high in the white oaks. This time, I will not feel the signal down my side that sends the school of mullet arcing from sea to sky. But this time, I can write. And so I turn my skills to work on their behalf, this time, in this life – the only one I will ever know.

Contact Me:

Phone: 706 542-0935 (O)

Email: dorindad@uga.edu

Website:

Address:
3246 Booger Hill Road
Danielsville, GA 30633

Biography:

Dorinda G. Dallmeyer is director of the Environmental Ethics Certificate Program at the University of Georgia. A native of Macon, Georgia, she holds three degrees from UGA: B.S. and M.S. degrees in geology and a J.D. Ms. Dallmeyer is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and past vice-president of the American Society of International Law. At UGA, she teaches courses in environmental dispute resolution and marine environmental ethics.

Since 2001 she has collaborated with a group of southern nature writers in creating the Southern Nature Project, founded on the conviction that writing can help us lead more human, profound, and courageous lives, thereby conserving the southern environment for generations yet to come. The Project has staged writers workshops and conferences as well as live readings broadcast on public radio. In 2005 the Southern Environmental Law Center presented her with two Phillip Reed Memorial Awards for Outstanding Writing about the Southern Environment: one she shared with the University of Georgia Press for her edited anthology Elemental South and the second for an advocacy essay entitled Waiting for a Train.

A devoted naturalist, in her spare time Dorinda and her husband David lecture on expedition cruises that have taken them to the Arctic, Central and South America, along with more than 20 expeditions to Antarctica. They live on 50 acres in rural Madison County, Georgia.

Books & Essays

Elemental South: An Anthology of Southern Nature Writing

Published: (edited volume) University of Georgia Press 2004

Dorinda G. Dallmeyer is shown with freshmen students and advisers at Emory University on November 12, 2008. All 300 students residing in the "environmentally-themed" dorms at Emory read Elemental South as part of their introduction to their new home.

Writing with a sense of southern place

Nature writers know that to be fully human is to be engaged with our natural surroundings. Elemental South is a gathering of works by some of the region's best nature writers—people who can coax from words the mysteries of our place in the landscape and the human relationship to wildness.

Arranged by theme according to the basic elements by which many cultures on earth interpret —earth, air, fire, water—the writings consider our actual and assumed connections in the greater scheme of functioning ecosystems. As we read of bears, ancient magnolias, swallow-tail kites, the serenity of a country childhood, the pleasure of eating real food, the remarkable provenance of ancient pottery shards, and much more, these works lure us deep into the southern landscape, away from the constructs of humanity and closer to a recognition of our inextricable ties to the earth.

The writers are all participants in the Southern Nature Project, an ongoing endeavor founded on the conviction that writing like the kind gathered here can help us to lead more human, profound, and courageous lives in terms of how we use our earth. Some of the featured writers are originally from the South, and others migrated here—but all have honed their voices on the region's distinctive landscapes.

Purchase Now
- Read Reviews
- Book Review:
  "Published 150 years after Thoreau's book, it is another Walden. I shall urge each of my grandchildren to read it." Southeastern Geographer, November 2006
- Book Review:
  "Elemental South provides a chorus of voices that blend harmoniously despite their different geographies, backgrounds, and styles. By tracing the fault lines and fractures of southern landscapes, society, and spirit, this anthology helps the South begin to heal stronger in the broken places." Will Harlan, editor of Blue Ridge Outdoors
- Book Review:
  "If you like to curl up with a good book on cold winter days and you also love the outdoors, read Elemental South. Each leads us to broader truths through careful observations of our natural surroundings." Southern Living
My Heart Bends Toward a River

Published: 2007

This essay was composed on for the Georgia River Network and the Ogeechee-Canoochee Riverkeeper and read live at Middle Place on Ossabaw Island, Georgia, for the Coastal Treasures benefit, April 14, 2007.

Download: My Heart Bends Toward a River
Sand County on Campus: A Walking Tour of the UGA Campus

Published: March 1, 2008

This walking tour of the University of Georgia campus highlights notable sites with excerpts from "A Sand County Almanac."

Download: Sand County on Campus
Turning the Tide, Saving the Seas

Published: January 24, 2008

This lecture marked the 223d anniversary of the signing of the charter creating the University of Georgia in 1785. For more information, please contact Dorinda at dorindad@uga.edu

Download: Turning the Tide, Saving the Seas
Values at Sea: Ethics for the Marine Environment

Published: (edited volume) University of Georgia Press 2003

Purchase Now
- Read Reviews
- Book Review:
  "Whether the reader is a novice to ethics or to the marine environmental movement, Values at Sea provides an insightful and valuable read. . . . Values at Sea provides extensive food for thought, laying out foundations on which a new marine ethics may be based." Hannah Gillelan, International Journal of Maritime History
Waiting for a Train

Published: 2005 Phillip Reed Award Winner

Dorinda Dallmeyer was co-recipient (with Billy Chism) of the 2005 Phillip Reed Memorial Award for Outstanding Writing on the Southern Environment, best unpublished advocacy essay.

Download: Waiting for a Train