Drew Lanham
Author, Poet, and Speaker
Fields of expertise:
J. Drew Lanham is a cultural ornithologist, naturalist, educator, and writer using robust science, artful essays, and evocative oratory to color the conservation conversation. Guided by principles of interconnectedness and interdependence, Dr. Lanham’s work centers on the growing issues within environmental justice as observed through the multifaceted perspective of a Black Southern man. As a storyteller, poet, and passionate advocate for accessibility and stewardship, his writing is in praise of wandering and wildness and in protest against all not justice or joy.
Lanham is a Distinguished Professor of Wildlife Ecology and Master Teacher at Clemson University. He has received a MacArthur “Genius” Grant (2022) as well as the Dan W. Lufkin Conservation Award from the National Audubon Society (2019), the Rosa Parks and Grace Lee Boggs Outstanding Service Award from the North American Association for Environmental Education (2016), and the E. O. Wilson Award for Outstanding Science in Biodiversity Conservation from the Center for Biological Diversity (2020) and the Thoreau Award in 2024. He served as the Poet Laureate of Edgefield, South Carolina (2022). Lanham and his family lives on a farm in the Upstate of South Carolina.
