Welcome to Love of Place. Most of my work celebrates our connection to the natural world.

Most recently, my Knocking on Heaven's Door is the winner in the category of science fiction in the 2016 New Mexico/Arizona Book Awards and in the category of fiction in the 2016 Arizona Authors Association Awards. A number of reviewers have been enthusiastic, including the website Geeks of Doom, which makes me smile. Not many people know me as a geek of doom! But I am happy to embrace the complexity of my personality.

I'm also so pleased that Diary of a Citizen Scientist: Chasing Tiger Beetles and Other New Ways of Engaging the World has been awarded the 2016 John Burroughs Medal for Distinguished Nature Writing, as well as the 2014 WILLA Award for Creative Nonfiction from Women Writing the West.

My historical fantasy Teresa of the New World won the 2015 Arizona Authors Association Award for best Children's Literature and was a finalist for the New Mexico/Arizona Book Award for Children's Literature, the WILLA Award for Children's Literature, and the May Sarton Award for Children's Literature.

These are nice landmarks in a writer's life. I would be writing regardless--but, still, whew. It's good to have some encouragement.

Feel free to contact me at http://www.sharmanaptrussell.com or through my author Facebook page, Sharman Apt Russell.


Wednesday, July 20, 2016




We need good views. I suppose I mean this politically and socially—as well as just the usual drop-dead gorgeous landscape of the Southwest I love very much, those red rocks and blue skies and drifting white cumulus clouds. I suppose I mean interior views, too. We need to look inside and see the beauty and complexity that we also see outside in the world of mountains and plants and animals and microbes. Because we are that world, too. We are not separate. We need good views, and we have plenty of them, and we need, sometimes, to just stop and stare.

1 comment:

Linda in Massachusetts said...

I haven't looked at your blog since I heard about it in 2015 while on a trip through New Mexico. This is a beautiful statement. Thank you so much.