Leila

Philip

Award-Winning Nonfiction Author

Guggenheim Fellow

Travels from: Woodstock, CT

“Lyrically written, meticulously observed, and exhaustively researched, BEAVERLAND is going to break your heart—and then heal it with compassion, beauty, and wonder.”—Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus

Leila Philip is the author of award-winning books of nonfiction that chronicle diverse, personal journeys. In The Road Through Miyama, Leila, already fluent in Japanese and a potter, traveled to Japan to apprentice to a master potter in southern Kyushu. A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family, took her much closer to home (literally), and weaves the history of the Hudson valley farm where she spent her childhood with a revealing account of what’s involved in cultivating orchards. Both books received awards, and glowing national reviews. A Guggenheim Fellow, Leila has also been awarded fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She works across genres, publishing poetry, essays and theatrical script and is currently at work on a documentary film. She was a contributing columnist at the Boston Globe and teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at the College of the Holy Cross where she is a professor in the English Department.

BEAVERLAND, Leila’s newst book, is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, though history and contemporary storytelling, how this weird rodent plays an oversized role in American history and its future. She follows fur trappers who lead her through waist high water, fur traders and fur auctioneers, as well as wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers, and the colorful group of activists known as beaver believers.

Leila currently lives in Woodstock, Connecticut where, surrounded by trees, she has learned to love the beauty of living in a woodland.

Beaverland: How One Weird Rodent Made America

Twelve |

December 6, 2022

Nonfiction

An intimate and revelatory dive into the world of the beaver—the wonderfully weird rodent that has surprisingly shaped American history and may save its ecological future.

From award-winning writer Leila Philip, BEAVERLAND is a masterful work of narrative science writing, a book that highlights, though history and contemporary storytelling, how this weird rodent plays an oversized role in American history and its future. She follows fur trappers who lead her through waist high water, fur traders and fur auctioneers, as well as wildlife managers, PETA activists, Native American environmental vigilantes, scientists, engineers, and the colorful group of activists known as beaver believers.

Beginning with the early trans-Atlantic trade in North America, Leila Philip traces the beaver’s profound influence on our nation’s early economy and feverish western expansion, its first corporations and multi-millionaires. In her pursuit of this weird and wonderful animal, she introduces us to people whose lives are devoted to the beaver, including a Harvard scientist from the Blackfeet Reservation in Montana, who uses drones to create 3-dimensional images of beaver dams; and an environmental restoration consultant in the Chesapeake whose nickname is the “beaver whisperer”.

What emerges is a poignant personal narrative, a startling portrait of the secretive world of the contemporary fur trade, and an engrossing ecological and historical investigation of these heroic animals who, once trapped to the point of extinction, have returned to the landscape as one of the greatest conservation stories of the 20th century. Beautifully written and impeccably researched, BEAVERLAND reveals the profound ways in which one odd creature and the trade surrounding it has shaped history, culture, and our environment.

Animals & Wildlife, Environmental Concerns, Female Author, Historical Nonfiction, Nonfiction, Sustainability

Water Rising

New Rivers Press |

November 9, 2015

Poetry

In 2012, Leila Philip and Garth Evans set out to challenge themselves as artists. Philip, an award-winning memoirist, wrote poems. Evans, an internationally renowned sculptor, made watercolors. Water Rising tells the story of this remarkable collaboration. Philip’s realist poems—about nature, beauty, love, and loss, set amongst Evans’ abstract, deeply hued, layered watercolors, create a book which is more than just a gorgeous read and a visual feast. What emerges in this book is a stunning and original collaboration, which, as Worcester Art Museum Director, Matthias Waschek, points out in his introduction, extends how we think about the relationship between painting and poetry. The title poem, “Water Rising,” was a finalist for the 2015 Pushcart Prize in literature.

The mission of Water Rising is to generate funds to support environmental stewardship. At its core, Water Rising celebrates our human need to connect to place.

Environmental Concerns, Female Author, Poetry

A Family Place: A Hudson Valley Farm, Three Centuries, Five Wars, One Family

Excelsior Editions |

April 23, 2009

Nonfiction

After her father’s death in 1992, Leila Philip and her family faced the imminent loss of the Hudson River Valley Farm that had been home to the Philip and Van Ness families since 1732. Taking an unpaid leave from her job, Leila set out with her mother to save their farm and the family home, a sprawling Federal period mansion called Talavera. After fifteen generations of Philip and Van Ness men, it would be up to these two determined women to hold off the twin threats of bankruptcy and urban sprawl.

Returning to Talavera led Leila on an unexpected journey into the past even as she and her mother sought to chart a future for their commercial fruit orchard. Stumbling upon family letters, belongings, and secrets, Leila discovered a past that was inextricably woven into three centuries of U.S. history. In A Family Place, Leila Philip brings to life the people and events that shaped her family and Talavera. Across the generations we meet colonial Dutch farmers, Revolutionary Generals, Civil War heroes, freed slaves, ambassadors, and a cast of wonderfully renegade aunts who fled Talavera in search of adventure around the world. Set against this background of land and people are the day-to-day elements of farm life at Talevera, from horticulture and beekeeping to art history and Romantic-era landscape gardening. It is in this quest to uncover and understand life at Talavera that Leila inevitably finds a place for herself, as she and her family and their farm embark on a new century in the Hudson Valley.

Female Author, Major Award Winners, Memoir & Biography, Nonfiction

Coming soon!

“Leila Philip offers an appreciative account of the North American rodent…all of this is inspiring.”—The New York Times

“This lyrical exploration is a portal for readers to enter into the mysteries of that world themselves.”—The Washington Post

“Lyrically written, meticulously observed, and exhaustively researched, BEAVERLAND is going to break your heart—and then heal it with compassion, beauty, and wonder.”—Sy Montgomery, New York Times bestselling author of The Soul of an Octopus

“We can’t have enough books about this wonderful creature–and this one is particularly strong on the remarkable history of the animal in our continent’s history and imagination. A loud slap of the tail in approval!”—Bill McKibben, author of The End of Nature

“BEAVERLAND is wonderful, captivating, and illuminating. I learned so much — about natural history, business history, the world of today’s fur trappers, and the role of a large, strange rodent in America’s ecological future. Leila Philip is a skilled and engaging guide through this beaver-influenced terrain.”—James Fallows, co-author of Our Towns

“Before the Anthropocene we had the Casterocene: a North American environment profoundly shaped by millions of beavers. In BEAVERLAND, Leila Philip takes us on a fascinating tour of the beaver’s effect on human history, and how, after its near extinction, we need to bring this rodent back for the sake of our ecosystems.”—Frans de Waal, author of Different: Gender Through the Eyes of a Primatologist (Norton, 2022)

“BEAVERLAND may be the best-realized book about an American animal in years. A work of open-hearted discovery. Can returning beavers and their works save our future? However you answer that, this fine book is going to re-arrange the furniture in your head.”
—Dan Flores, New York Times bestselling author of Coyote America

“An astonishing, intrepid compendium about the world according to beaver, including social, cultural, and ethnographic history, juxtaposed with personal narrative. Philip brilliantly paves the way for us to enter this unlikely shaper of our nation as she follows naturalists, researchers, trappers, and local historians, as well as visiting her own backyard pond.

“She dives into many avenues of research, including the enslavement of Native Americans, the cunning greed of John Jacob Astor, the obsession of Dorothy Richards who lived with 14 beavers in her Adirondack house, and the lifeways of indigenous peoples. Every inch of the way we know we are in good hands. BEAVERLAND is poignant, impeccably researched, and as artfully put together as any this ‘weird rodent’s’ houses, with an eye toward the beaver’s role in the anthropogenic disaster of our changing climate and damaged ecosystems.”—Gretel Ehrlich, author of Unsolaced and The Solace of Open Spaces

“Leila Philip’s BEAVERLAND is an engaging story centered on a nerdy anti-hero, the beaver. While she states that beavers are weird, she makes a strong case that people in the beaver world are even weirder. This book weaves humor and storytelling with profound thoughts about nature. Don’t miss the beavers parachuting into the Idaho wilderness.”—Mark Kurlansky, New York Times bestselling author of Cod and Salt

“BEAVERLAND is a model for 21st-century environmental writing—a beautifully told story with lodes of well-researched history and ecology, and a lyrical ode to natural wonders that steers clear of romanticism and questions cherished environmental ideas. This book will surprise the hell out of you on nearly every page.”—Jenny Price, author of Stop Saving the Planet!: An Environmentalist Manifesto

“In this engaging and informative book, Leila Philip tells the tale of North American beavers as seen through human eyes. Philip uses diverse vignettes, from Native American creation stories to visits with contemporary trappers, beaver believers, and scientists, to gradually build a story of beavers and humans through time. Plenty of basic information about beavers is presented in digestible bites along the way as Philip deftly evokes place, mood, people, and beavers.”—Dr. Ellen Wohl

“Ranging across a continent and five centuries, BEAVERLAND explores our strange relationship with an odd creature capable of inexplicable engineering. In lyrical words and with deep insights, Leila Philip reveals how beavers shaped our environment – and how humans have unraveled their creation.”—Alan Taylor, author of American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850

“Are beavers smart, asks Leila Philip in this captivating personal journey through history and streams that brings secretive creatures to life—beavers and those who trap them. This engaging tale of how beavers shaped America’s rivers and streams for millennia, and how their comeback is now helping restore waterways, invites us to wonder who, really, is the smart one?”—David R. Montgomery, author of King of Fish

“Leila Philip brings intelligence, enthusiasm, and an open mind to her inquiry into the lives and histories of beavers, offering her reader a many-angled vision of her subject as she investigates the overlapping and often-competing interests of the trapper, the developer, the naturalist, the merchant. In doing so, she tracks the beaver’s essential place in our history and our lives. But BEAVERLAND is also a plea — beyond our history, our markets, and our desires — for the pure appreciation of this mammal and its capacity to remake the world. Perhaps this is the greatest achievement of Philip’s clear-eyed and beautifully written book.”—Jane Brox, author of Silence

“Most interesting is what Philip learned about beavers’ contribution to environmental restoration… A spirited, informative historical and environmental investigation.” —Kirkus Reviews

“Offers an enthralling history of beavers and their impact on the United States… The result is a triumph of popular nature writing.”—Publisher’s Weekly

“Philips’ coverage of beaver behavior, habits, and impacts on biodiversity and ecosystems is instructive…her narrative goes beyond biology as she delves into the ways beavers shape water, land, and community in America.”—Booklist Reviews

Leila’s Events

Leila’s Journalism & Other Writing

Honors, Awards & Recognition

2020 Furthermore Publication Award, J.M, Kaplan Fund
2020 Society of Environmental Journalists Story Grant Award
2019 Michigan Humanities Council Fellowship
2017 American Antiquarian Society Artist & Writers Baron Fellowship
2015 Ct Arts /NEA Initiative Grant funded by the National Endowment for the Arts
2014 Pushcart Prize in Literature Nomination for Literary Nonfiction fall 2014
2014 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend
2007 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship Literary Nonfiction
2006 National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend Nominee
2002 Publication Award the Victorian Society of America, A Family Place
2002 Book Award, Documentation of American Life A Family Place
2000 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in American Studies
1999 American Association of University Women American Fellowship
1999 Furthermore, the Publication Program of the J.M. Kaplan Fund
1998 New York State Library Research Fellowship
1997 Picker Research Fellowship Colgate University
1996 Rona Jaffe Writer's Award Finalist
1996 Garrison Fellowship for distinguished research: Colgate University
1994 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature
1993 Money for Women/ Deming Memorial Fund award for nonfiction
1992 Radcliffe Bunting Fellow in Creative Writing Radcliffe, Cambridge
1991 James Thurber Writer-in-Residence The Ohio State University, Columbus
1990 PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation for Nonfiction, The Road Through Miyama