Learn about our 2026 Authors!

My passions are telling stories and solving the mysteries of our planet. I am equally at home in a dusty archive and a cleanroom without a speck of dust. A researcher by training and a teacher for over four decades, I look at our planet with wonder and curiosity. My career has taken me to searing deserts and frigid ice sheets. Throughout, I've focused my energies on understanding the link between our Earth and human societies - what today we call, sustainability.

I am a professor of Environmental Science at the University of Vermont, where he develops methods to understand ice and date rocks. I publish in Science and Nature, and my findings have been covered by CNN, New York Times, Washington Post, and the Weather Channel, among others. I live in Burlington, Vermont.

Susan Kaplan is an environmental health lawyer, professor and writer. She has held policy positions in federal and state government, served as assistant director of an energy policy group at Harvard University’s Kennedy School, and taught environmental health policy in the public health programs of the University of Illinois Chicago and Northwestern University. Her writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor and other outlets. She lives in Vermont.

Robert Mello is a retired Vermont Superior Court judge, author of When the Trees Came Back: The Great Battle to Save Vermont's Forests, and is also the author of Moses Robinson and the Founding of Vermont (published by the Vermont Historical Society in 2014) and Last Stand of the Red Spruce (Island Press, 1988).

Emma Paris (she/her) is the 2025-26 Vermont Youth Poet Laureate, and a sophomore at Bennington College, where she studies Poetry and Environmental Science. Emma has been published in journals such as Chautauqua, Zaum Magazine, Chariot Press, Harpur Palate, MORIA Literary Magazine, Snaggletooth Magazine, and more. She has an American Voices Nomination from Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, is a 2025 Adroit Prizes Commended Writer, and has been nominated for the 2026 Pushcart Prize. Emma has interned at both Green Writers Press, and the Bennington Review, working on their respective editorial staffs.

Michael Snyder is a Vermont licensed forester and owner of Greenfire Enterprises, advising, consulting, and writing on forestry, forest health, outdoor recreation, policy, and strategic communications. His clients include family and municipal forest owners, non-profit environmental and conservation organizations, and for-profit businesses. Previously he served for 12 years as Commissioner of Vermont’s Department of Forests, Parks, and Recreation and Vermont State Forester. Prior to that he served for 14 years as Chittenden County Forester, providing technical forest stewardship assistance to private landowners and municipalities. He also taught, for 12 years, two courses in Forestry at the University of Vermont and wrote the Woods Whys column for Northern Woodlands Magazine for two decades. He is author of the book, Woods Whys — An Exploration of Forests and Forestry.

Bob Zaino is the Natural Community Ecologist with the Vermont Fish and Wildlife Department. In that role, he conducts inventories and assessments of natural communities, and the myriad species they comprise, across the state as part of the Department’s Natural Heritage Inventory. He applies that information to inform land management and conservation. Bob strives to connect people to nature, and to protect plants, animals, and wild places for the future. He is a co-author of the revised second edition of the book Wetland, Woodland, Wildland: A Guide to the Natural Communities of Vermont. He is a graduate of Bowdoin College and has a master’s degree from the University of Vermont’s Field Naturalist Program.