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Robin Wall Kimmerer was born in 1953 and is a Potawatomi botanist, author, and professor who champions the use of Indigenous knowledge in science. She received her master’s degree in botany and her PhD in plant ecology from the University of Wisconsin—Madison. Kimmerer, who lives on a farm near Syracuse, New York, is a distinguished teaching professor of environmental biology at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Environmental Science and Forestry. She also founded and is currently the director for the Center for Native Peoples and the Environment at SUNY College, which seeks to promote the combined study of science and Indigenous wisdom. She was named a MacArthur Fellow and “genius” grant winner in 2022, which allowed her to cut back on her teaching and focus more on writing. Prior to publishing The Serviceberry in 2024, Kimmerer wrote Gathering Moss (2003), and the book that brought her to wide acclaim, Braiding Sweetgrass (2013).

Braiding Sweetgrass was an enormous success, but that success was not achieved overnight by Kimmerer. When it was published in 2013 by Milkweed Editions, a small nonprofit publishing house, it received a respectful reception but initially did not attract strong attention. However, what the book lacked in publicity, it gradually made up for in deeply impressed and impacted readers who, one-by-one, recommended it to others—many of whom would repeat this cycle by recommending it to yet more readers. Seven years after its initial publication, Braiding Sweetgrass began showing up on national best-seller lists in 2020. As of late 2024, it has sold more than 2 million copies.

In a November 2024 interview in the Guardian, Kimmerer described Rachel Carson, the author of Silent Spring (the 1962 book widely credited with bringing the subject of environmentalism into the public conscience and galvanized it into a modern political movement), as writing inspiration. She said she has also drawn inspiration from the work of the poet Wendell Berry and anthropologist, educator, and writer Loren Eiseley, whose lyrical descriptions of natural sciences to lay readers in the 1950s through 1970s served as a model for Kimmerer.

Next section Context: The Serviceberry & Braiding Sweetgrass

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