“I have been changed by this book. My relationship to nature, the way I think about plants and animals, was transformed by spending time with Robin Wall Kimmerer’s talented storytelling. Her wonder and appreciation for the natural world is infectious. Kimmerer’s influence on the reader is subtle, but if you spend some time with her work, you have the chance to absorb some of her wisdom, grace, intellect and joy.”—Trista Doyle, St. Louis County Library

“It’s one of those books that you can’t imagine having a conversation with a person who hasn’t read it after you’ve turned the last page. It’ll upend your worldview in the best way possible. I can’t think of a book more important to this moment in human history than this one right here. Stunning beyond words.””—Conner Horak, Tattered Cover Bookstore

“This book has taught me so much, hopefully changed me for the better forever. It was heartbreaking to realize my nearly total disconnection from the earth, and painful to see the world again, slowly and in pieces. I’m sure there is still so much I can’t see. But I’m grateful for this book and I recommend it to every single person!”—Lucy D., Richmond, VA

“Kimmerer is an elder thinker of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She beautifully and generously brings their oral tradition of their healthy relationship with nature, which she refers to as an economy of reciprocity. She is also a massively accredited botanist. Her writing is the gentle medicine we dumb humans need if we’re to have any hope of salvaging our relationship with Mother Nature.”—Nick Offerman, New York Times

“For years I’ve been using Braiding Sweetgrass in my environmental philosophy courses at UChicago, and with every course, my appreciation for this extraordinary work deepens. It is also invariably a course highlight with the students, who gain from it a richer (and urgently needed) perspective on both science and philosophy.”—Bart S.

“Braiding Sweetgrass was very successful at allowing us to change our perspective on how we view nature. Referring to the marshlands as “Wal-marsh” helped open my eyes to the idea that we basically explore nature, doing our “grocery shopping” and taking anything we might need that would benefit us. Another important point the reading focused on was the idea of giving back to nature.”—Student

Cheryl L’Hirondelle is an interdisciplinary songwriter, artist, and critical thinker who has performed internationally. As an artist whose family roots are from Papaschase First Nation, amiskwaciy waskahikan (Edmonton, Alberta) and Kikino Metis Settlement, Alberta, L’Hirondelle’s primary focus is to draw from Indigenous and nehiyawewin (Cree) language to illustrate immersive, olfactory environments of ‘radical inclusion.’ After discovering the book Braiding Sweetgrass and befriending its author, Robin Wall Kimmerer, L’Hirondelle was inspired to create the song (and music video) “gchi-miigwech maskihkiya,” as part of a musical performance documentary series that elevates the connections between Indigenous song-writers and their stories of beauty, adversity, and justice. The music video (featuring artwork by acclaimed Métis artist Christi Belcourt) was promptly dedicated to Kimmerer, and would go on to live a wide-reaching second life after Kimmerer recommended it to become the featured intro song in an episode of Jane Fonda’s Fire Drill Friday series on the necessity of climate action with Greenpeace USA.

When Sophia Hall, the seventeen-year-old Youth Poet Laureate of Washington, DC, was asked about which authors inspired her the most, she had this to say about Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: “I recently went hiking and backpacking in the Rockies with the High Mountain Institute, where I learned more about the environment and climate change, and where I first began reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s essays. They influenced me to take an environmental science class my senior year of high school, and more generally, they prompted me to think about how my writing can discuss larger issues. I can’t say enough about her work.” Now, Sophia has been selected as a 2023 Presidential Scholar and plans to use her role to “promote joy, literacy, and the love of learning to future scholars of all backgrounds,” a mission undoubtedly influenced by Kimmerer, one of the greatest multidisciplinary educators of our time.

Bailey Hutchinson, an editor for Milkweed Editions, was so moved by Braiding Sweetgrass that she decided to send a copy to her brother and sister-in-law after she read it. The year was 2020, and soon after sending the book, Hutchinson learned that she would become an aunt: but due to the ongoing pandemic, she would have to wait a year or more to meet her niece. Though Hutchinson wasn’t there to meet Vivian in person just after she was born, Kimmerer’s book turned out to be the gift that allowed her to be there in spirit. Vivian spent the first year of her life hearing Braiding Sweetgrass read aloud each night by her parents. Hutchinson’s brother said the book “helped us cope with being so alone in the first year of parenthood, totally cut off from family during difficult times. It also helped us feel like [Hutchinson] was present with us, making a relationship with Vivian, even though [she] couldn’t physically be there. Our favorite essay is ‘The Gift of Strawberries;’ ‘Gifts exist in a realm of humility and mystery—as with random acts of kindness, we do not know their source.’”

The Rocky Mountain Land Library is a one-of-a-kind nonprofit library and retreat center based in Denver, Colorado, whose sole mission is to help connect people to nature and the land. Back in the early 2010s, its founders foresaw an ever-growing need for places of quiet thought, creative pursuits, and active community in an era of population expansion, so the Land Library was born as a place of respite, to provide access not only to books, but also to the library’s surrounding lands. Today, it hosts summer-long workshops and boasts a robust collection of more than 50,000 books on natural history, gathered and curated by co-founders Jeff Lee and Ann Marie Martin. In their exciting, most recent milestone, the staff convened to add the finishing touches to their Buffalo Peaks Ranch’s Master Plan, a comprehensive study funded by Park County’s Land & Water Trust Fund. In a public statement revealing the behind-the-scenes efforts of this monumental step forward, the staff shared the following about the biggest inspiration for their unprecedented blueprint: “You’ll notice that Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass pops up quite often in the slides ahead. There are many books that have inspired the future design of this one-of-a-kind residential library in Colorado’s South Park—but none more than Braiding Sweetgrass.”

A great book can reverberate far beyond the printed page. When Sara Fraker, a music professor and member of the Tucson Symphony Orchestra, finished reading Braiding Sweetgrass, she was alive with inspiration. She knew that what she’d read and learned in Kimmerer’s book needed to reach the widest audience possible, in a newly accessible way. So Sara commissioned composer Asha Srinivasan to write a 10-minute score for oboe, electronics, and natural sounds. The resulting piece, entitled “Braiding,” is an exciting addition to an emerging body of music concerned with climate change and deep ecology.

Richard Powers, the famously prolific American novelist, may be best known for his Pulitzer Prize-winning book of fiction, The Overstory—but he’s willing to let himself be known as a long-time Robin Wall Kimmerer fan, too. When given an opportunity to reflect about some of the most impactful books he’s read over the years, he didn’t hesitate to share the following: “I was driving across the country listening to [Robin Wall Kimmerer] read the audio book [of Braiding Sweetgrass], and I had to pull over several times…My eyes were filled with tears, and I couldn’t see the road.” While this powerfully emotional response to Kimmerer’s work may come as no surprise to the beloved author’s fanbase, Powers was moved to commemorate the significance of Kimmerer’s impact in his life—and the world at large—in a truly singular way. He named a character after her in his New York Times bestselling novel, Bewilderment, which follows the story of an astrobiologist searching for life throughout the cosmos while single-handedly raising his unusual nine-year-old son, Robin, in the wake of his wife’s passing. Click the link below to watch a powerfully enriching conversation between Richard Powers and the inspirational Robin Wall Kimmerer and Terry Tempest Williams, on “Tales of Sweetgrass & Trees.”