Matthew Juniper 'link' Info

If you want to apply Juniper’s methods:

| Initiative | Role | Impact | |------------|------|--------| | | Co‑Founder (2014) | Secured funding for 12 miles of pedestrian‑only boulevards, planted over 2,500 native trees, and reduced local traffic fatalities by 18%. | | Story & Soil Workshops | Lead Facilitator (2016‑present) | Conducts free, interdisciplinary workshops for high‑school students that combine creative writing with hands‑on gardening. Over 1,200 youths have participated to date. | | National Urban Forestry Coalition | Board Member (2021‑2024) | Helped draft the “City Canopy Pact,” a policy framework adopted by 27 municipalities to protect and expand urban tree canopies. | | Literacy for the Wild | Volunteer Mentor (ongoing) | Partners with the Sierra Club’s youth outreach program, pairing emerging writers with professional editors to produce climate‑focused storytelling pieces. | matthew juniper

| Year | Event | |------|-------| | | Born in Asheville, North Carolina, to a schoolteacher mother (Linda) and a landscape architect father (Thomas). The family’s home sat on the edge of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where childhood afternoons were spent hiking, sketching, and listening to his mother read poetry aloud. | | 2005 | Graduated from Asheville High School as valedictorian; elected president of the environmental club, leading a successful campaign to ban single‑use plastic bottles on campus. | | 2009 | Earned a B.A. in English Literature and Environmental Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, graduating cum laude . His senior thesis, “Narratives of the Wild: How Storytelling Shapes Conservation Ethics,” won the university’s James H. Dodd Award for Interdisciplinary Research. | | 2012 | Completed an MFA in Creative Writing at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where he studied under celebrated authors Rita Dove and Junot Díaz. His workshop piece, “The Last Oak,” was published in The New Yorker ’s “Emerging Voices” section. | If you want to apply Juniper’s methods: |

| Title | Year | Notable Accolades | |-------|------|-------------------| | The Last Oak | 2013 | Winner, PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for a debut collection; praised by The Paris Review for “its haunting lyricism and ecological urgency.” | | Riverstone | 2017 | Shortlisted for the Story Prize ; includes the widely anthologized story “Midnight on the Mill River,” which explores the intersection of memory and river restoration. | | Silk & Cedar | 2022 | Won the National Book Critics Circle Award for Fiction; notable for its interwoven narratives set in four U.S. cities undergoing rapid gentrification. | | | National Urban Forestry Coalition | Board