His academic work has been called by reviewers as "an excellent entry to the field for the student or general reader who may have read considerably in the area but who is only beginning to make his or her way around the academic study of nature writing".[3]The Best Read Naturalist was called "[a] much needed and thorough collection of Emerson's most significant nature writings."[4]
When not writing,Branch enjoys activist and stewardship work,native plant gardening,bucking stovewood,playing blues harmonica,sipping sour mash,cursing at baseball on the radio,and walking at least 1,000 miles each year in the hills and canyons surrounding his high desert home.
His professional memberships include the Sierra Club,Wilderness Society,Nature Conservancy,Friends of the Everglades,Sierra Nevada Alliance,League to Save Lake Tahoe,Friends of Nevada Wilderness,Great Basin Mine Watch,Cenozoic Society's Wildlands Project,John Muir Society,Modern Language Association,American Association of University Professors,American Literature Association,American Society for Environmental History.[11]
Writing career
Branch's writing career spans from academic articles to humor essays. His column for High Country News “Rants from the Hill”included 69 essays from 2010-2016,which were then collected into two books,Raising Wild and Rants from the Hill.[12] With over 200 publications and 300 invited talks,lectures,and workshops,Branch's work has aided in founding ecocriticism.[13] A selection of his work in ecocritcism includes:
“Are You Serious? A Modest Proposal for Environmental Humor.”Oxford Handbook of Ecocriticism (edited by Greg Garrard),Oxford University Press,2014:378-90.
“Saving All the Pieces:The Place of Textual Editing in Ecocriticism.”The Greening of Literary Scholarship:Literature,Theory,and the Environment (edited by Steven Rosendale),University of Iowa Press,2002:3-25.
“Ecocriticism:The Nature of Nature in Literary Theory and Practice.”Weber Studies:An Interdisciplinary Humanities Journal 11.1 (Winter,1994):41-55.
A selection of his work in creative nonfiction includes:
The Michael P. Branch Papers are curated in the Special Collections and University Archives,University of Nevada,Reno. Established in 2014. 44 boxes to date. (Collection Identifier #2014-05).[14]
Creative nonfiction
On the Trail of the Jackalope:How a Legend Captured the World's Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer. Pegasus Books,2022. ISBN 1643139339 (hardcover).
How to Cuss in Western:And Other Missives from the High Desert. Shambhala / Roost Books (distributed by Penguin Random House),2018. ISBN9781611804614 (paperback).
Rants from the Hill: On Packrats, Bobcats, Wildfires, Curmudgeons, a Drunken Mary Kay Lady, and Other Encounters with the Wild in the High Desert. Shambhala / Roost Books (distributed by Penguin Random House), 2017. ISBN978-1611804577 (paperback); ISBN9780834840553 (E-book).
Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness. Shambhala Publications / Roost Books (distributed by Penguin Random House). 2016. ISBN978-1-61180-345-7 (cloth).
John Muir's Last Journey: South to the Amazon and East to Africa; Unpublished Journals and Selected Correspondence, editor. Foreword by Robert Michael Pyle. Washington, D.C.: Island Press/Shearwater Books, 2001. ISBN1-55963-640-8 (cloth); ISBN9781559636407 (paper); ISBN9781559636407 (E-book). Audiobook released by Audible Studios in 2016 (Reader: Allan Robertson).
Reading the Roots: American Nature Writing before Walden. Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 2004. ISBN0-8203-2547-3 (cloth); ISBN0-8203-2548-1 (paper).
Reading the Earth: New Directions in the Study of Literature and the Environment. Co-editor with Rochelle Johnson, Daniel Patterson, and Scott Slovic. Moscow: University of Idaho Press, 1998. ISBN0-89301-213-0 (cloth); ISBN0-89301-220-3 (paper).
The Height of Our Mountains: Nature Writing from Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley. Co-editor with Daniel J. Philippon. Foreword by John Elder. Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. ISBN0-8018-5632-9 (cloth); ISBN0-8018-5691-4 (paper).
↑ Lindholdt, Paul. "How to Cuss in Western (And Other Missives from the High Desert) by Michael P. Branch (review)." Western American Literature, vol. 54 no. 1, 2019, pp. 94-96. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/wal.2019.0028
↑ The Height of Our Mountains: Nature Writing from Virginia's Blue Ridge Mountains and Shenandoah Valley by Michael P.Branch and Daniel J. Philippon. Appalachian Heritage, Volume 26, Number 3, Summer 1998, pp. 68-70 (Review) Published by The University of North Carolina Press DOI: https://doi.org/10.1353/aph.1998.0024.
↑ Meehan, Sean Ross. ""The Best Read Naturalist": Nature Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson ed. by Michael P. Branch and Clinton Mohs (review)." Early American Literature, vol. 53 no. 1, 2018, pp. 214-216. Project MUSE, doi:10.1353/eal.2018.0011
↑ Lynch, Tom (August 1, 2017). "Raising Wild: Dispatches from a Home in the Wilderness. By Michael P. Branch". Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment. 24 (2): 371–373. doi:10.1093/isle/isx013.
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