Kim Todd

June 19
Getty Museum
Harold M. Williams Auditorium, 7 p.m.
Los Angeles, CA

Kim Todd’s first book, Tinkering with Eden, a Natural History of Exotics in America, tells the stories of non-native species and how they arrived in the United States. Species covered range from pigeons, brought over by some of the earliest colonists, to starlings, imported by a man who wanted to bring all the birds mentioned in Shakespeare to Central Park. The book explores our developing understanding of exotic species as we become more aware of the potential problems they may pose for native ecosystems. Tinkering with Eden received the PEN/Jerard Award and the Sigurd Olson Nature Writing Award and was selected as one of Booklist’s Top Ten Science/Technical Books for 2001.

Her second book, Chrysalis, Maria Sibylla Merian and the Secrets of Metamorphosis looks at the life of a pioneering explorer/naturalist who traveled to South America in 1699 to study insect metamorphosis. The story also traces ideas about metamorphosis through time. Chrysalis was published by Harcourt in 2007. The New Yorker called it a "spellbinding biography" and Kirkus Reviews lauded it as "a breathtaking example of scholarship and storytelling." It was selected as a Montana Book Award honor book, as one of the best science/technical books of 2007 by the Library Journal, and as a "Book to Remember" from 2007 by the New York Public Library.

Her articles and essays have appeared in Orion, Sierra Magazine, California Wild and Grist, among other places. She has taught environmental and nature writing at the University of Montana, the University of California at Santa Cruz extension, and the Environmental Writers Institute. Todd is a senior fellow with the Environmental Leadership Program.

She has an M.F.A. in creative nonfiction and an M.S. in environmental studies, both from the University of Montana, and B.A. in English from Yale. She lives with her family in Missoula, Montana.