From Thomas McGuane on Idaho's Snake River to Louise Erdrich on the tallgrass prairies of her native North Dakota to Carl Hiaasen combing the imperiled fishing grounds of the Florida Keys, some of the country's finest writers celebrate the geography that The Nature Conservancy has designated as "Last Great Places."
Joseph Barbato is an author, journalist, and consultant who blogs about books at www.redweatherreview.com.
Barbato grew up in New York City and earned B.A. and M.A. degrees at New York University, where he worked for many years as a writer and editor. He later spent nine years as editorial director at the headquarters of The Nature Conservancy, where he co-edited the literary anthologies "Heart of the Land" and "Off the Beaten Path." Barbato has also served as fiction editor of a little magazine, The Remington Review, and has syndicated features on books and authors to The Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, and many other newspapers.
A former contributing editor of Publishers Weekly, he has also been a contributor to Smithsonian, Kirkus Reviews, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Washington Post, The New York Times, Newsday, America, The Village Voice, The New Leader, The Chicago Tribune, and The Progressive. He also co-edited the literary anthology "Patchwork of Dreams," which gathers stories, poems, and other work by residents of the multi-cultural community of Queens in New York City.
A veteran of capital campaigns at NYU and The Nature Conservancy, Barbato has written several books on nonprofit fundraising and communications: "How to Write Knockout Proposals," "Writing for a Good Cause," and "Attracting the Attention Your Cause Deserves." He has been a consultant to many nonprofit institutions, including M.I.T., the Smithsonian Institution, the American Academy in Berlin, the Brookings Institution, the Westport Playhouse, the American Diabetes Association, the National Wildlife Federation, the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, and Oxford University (U.K.).
