When I published my first creative nonfiction book Wilderness and Razor Wire (Mercury House, 2000), the San Francisco Chronicle called it "entirely original: an edgy, ferocious, subtly complex collection of essays," saying "Reading it is like chatting with someone on the street and suddenly noticing there is blood running down his side."  The book won the 2002 John Burroughs Medal for outstanding nature writing.  I have published more than a hundred nature articles and essays in places like the Los Angeles Times, Arizona Highways, Bird Watcher’s Digest, Manoa, Puerto Del Sol, the Gettysburg Review, and David Quammen's anthology  The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2000.  The University of Arizona Press published Chiricahua Mountains: Bridging the Borders of Wildness  in October 2003, and my third book, Beyond Desert Walls: Essays from Prison in March 2005.  My fourth book, Time of Grace: Thoughts on Nature, Family, and the Politics of Crime and Punishment is due in the fall of 2007.  Currently, with a grant from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, I'm completing a book about hope and redemption on Arizona’s Santa Cruz River.  I hold degrees in biology and creative writing from the University of Arizona and live with my wife and daughters in Tucson.