Elizabeth Rush

Elizabeth Rush is the author of Rising: Essays from America's Disappearing Shore (Milkweed Editions, 2018). Rising is an on-the-ground exploration of seven North American coastal communities responding to sea level rise. Instead of predicting the negative effects of climate change Rising focuses on the lived experience of those already dealing with the results of a warming planet, investigating a range of adaptive responses from retreat to wetlands replenishment. It asks, how can we stay, against great odds, in the places that have defined us, and how will we know when it is time to leave? Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Harpers, Granta, Orion, Creative Nonfiction, The New Republic, Le Monde Diplomatique, Al Jazeera, Witness, the Huffington Post, Frieze, and others.

Rush is the Andrew Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Pedagogical Innovation at Bates College where she is designing creative nonfiction courses that carry the environmental sciences and digital technologies into the classroom. She is also the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the Science in Society Award granted by the National Academy of Science Writers, and the Blue River Fellowship awarded by the National Science Foundation and Oregon State University. She was recently awarded the Howard Foundation Fellowship by Brown University.