Melissa L. Sevigny

The Pima County Public Library named Mythical River as a top pick for the 2016 Southwest Books of the Year. Reviewer Vicki Ann Duraine wrote:

Imagine a world in which a river’s conservation was as important as the community it supports. With the insight of a hydrologist and the heart of a poet, Sevigny champions this ideal in her lyrical and exhaustively-researched science journal cum memoir, interweaving the centuries-old paradigm of unlimited natural resources with the facts as she knows them: the Southwest is running out of water and rain does not follow the plow. … It is a call to arms: Mythical River may be the most important book you read all year.

Reviewer Bill Broyles said:

She’s balanced, funny, and perceptive… [and] brings a youthful exuberance to her alluring narrative.

Under Desert Skies was also nominated. Learn about all the titles chosen on the Pima County Public Library website or read the Arizona Daily Star’s article.

Kirkus gives Brave the Wild River a starred review, calling it “a beautiful tribute to two pioneering women of science.”

Publisher’s Weekly gives Brave the Wild River a starred review: “Sevigny recreates their expedition in novelistic detail, producing a narrative as propulsive as the current of the Colorado. Readers will be swept away.”

I moderate a Q&A with Dr. Alan Stern about the future of NASA’s New Horizons mission for Lowell Observatory’s I Heart Pluto Festival. Watch it here.

I’m featured in this article on women in science in The NAU Review

More news and reviews

“Grassroots efforts bring firewood to Hopi people,” NPR’s All Things Considered, January 16, 2023.

“NASA returns to its old training grounds: The moonlike lava fields of Arizona,” NPR’s Morning Edition, November 10, 2022. 

“Drought puts a stop to artificial floods that have helped restore habitat,” NPR’s All Things Considered, October 13, 2022.

“Apache tribes in Arizona are leading the way in saving Emory oak trees,” NPR’s Weekend Edition, September 11, 2022. 

More writing

My article A River’s Return, published in Edible Baja Arizona, wins first place for environmental/science writing from the Arizona Press Club! The article describes how the Colorado River’s experimental pulse flow restored water, and hope, to the Delta. (Photo courtesy of Seth Cothrun, with aerial support from LightHawk).

“Mythical River is an excellent read and an important contribution to the literature of the Southwest, especially that which focuses on water. The book’s scope moves from the micro to the human-scaled to the planetary, but it is all tied together to give a complete picture of the southwestern environment and the vital part water plays within it.”

—Christopher Cokinos, author, Bodies, of the Holocene

“Through a series of engaging interviews, Melissa Sevigny guides her readers on an amazing journey of solar system exploration in a way that captures the pioneering spirit of the Lunar and Planetary Lab’s researchers. It is a must-read for anybody interested in humanity’s quest to understand our origins and place in the universe.”

—Dante Lauretta, Professor of Planetary Science, University of Arizona