Molly Murfee

As a creative nonfiction and place-based author, Molly Murfee has studied, written and taught the subjects of earth-based mythology, nature writing and environmental literature, ecofeminism, women’s studies, anthropology, and indigenous culture and history for over 30 years. She has been honored as a: 2024 Aldo & Estella Leopold Writing Resident; 2024 Wild Woman Essay Contest Finalist; 2023 Mountain Words Literary Festival Local Writer-in-Residence; 2022 Annie Dillard Award for Creative Nonfiction Finalist; 2022 Bread Loaf Environmental Writer’s Conference Contributor; 2019 Colorado Creative Industries Career Advancement Award Recipient; and 2020 Crested Butte Arts Festival Artistic Enrichment Grant Recipient, among other awards.

Penning her prose from the rural heart of the Southern Rocky Mountains, Molly authors the Earth Muffin Memos column and blog, focused on fostering environmental and social change, and has over 500 published articles, from local venues to national journals and magazines such as Tulip Tree Review, Mountain Journal, the Mountain Gazette, and Powder Magazine.

Molly holds Bachelor and Master of Arts degrees in literature, creative writing, and environmental writing; and has served as faculty teaching the same with Colorado College, Colorado State University, and the Audubon Expedition Institute at Lesley University; as well as both the Nature Writing Concentration of the MFA Graduate Program in Creative Writing and the Environment & Sustainability BA Undergraduate Program at Western Colorado University.

As a creative activist, Molly co-directs her community’s Autumn Equinox celebration generating earth-honoring and community-building practices through storytelling, mythmaking, public art, and street theatre. She has additionally presented her work and taught classes at conferences such as the Mountain Words Literary Festival and the Association for the Study of Literature and the Environment.

Educationally, one of Molly’s favorite pursuits is to help others reweave the heartstrings of their primordial relationship with nature combining writing as a process activity, contemplative activities, mindfulness, stillness, and sensory awareness. All of these she hopes leads to inner peace as well as outward environmental activism.

Molly is hard at work on her creative nonfiction book, The Adventure of Home, re-membering our ancestral belonging to this Earth by unraveling the destructive foundations of colonialism, and reweaving mythologies of a sacred wild.

Find Molly’s Earth Muffin Memos Blog & Newsletter, and more on her book and field-based writing and nature connection workshops at www.mollymurfee.com.