The Naturalist at Home emphasizes hands-on exploration with easy outdoor projects designed to help naturalists observe and study everything from invertebrates to mushrooms to mammals. Critically-acclaimed writer and naturalist Kelly Brenner developed these projects based on real techniques used by naturalists and scientists in the field. Easy to adapt, they are suitable for naturalists at all levels of experience and expertise.
These projects bridge the gap between sophisticated science experiments and easy nature activities and between reading about nature and experiencing it in a real and tangible way. They are simple to carry out, and naturalists can repurpose items they have at home, find them at a thrift store, or purchase inexpensive tools and materials. Detailed descriptions of organisms, along with the author’s hand-drawn illustrations, help naturalists visualize what they may discover.
I am a writer, naturalist and photographer based in Seattle and the author of The Naturalist at Home: Projects for Discovering the Hidden World Around Us, published May 1,2023 and Nature Obscura: A City’s Hidden Natural World, published April 1, 2020 from Mountaineers Books and shortlisted for the 2021 Pacific Northwest Book Awards and a finalist for the 2021 Washington State Book Awards.
In addition to nonfiction, I also write fiction and am currently at work on a series about a pirate naturalist. I’m publishing short stories, most which are folklore and nature inspired, on my website for my patrons.
I have bylines in Popular Science, Crosscut, National Wildlife Magazine, The Open Notebook along with a variety of other websites and publications and I founded this website in 2009 to first begin writing about urban nature.
In 2009 I earned a bachelors degree in landscape architecture from the University of Oregon with cum laude honors and a certificate in non-fiction writing from the University of Washington in 2016.
The Pacific Northwest has always been my home and I’ve explored much of the region and investigated the local flora and fauna. My favorite nature to search out are slime molds, dragonflies and nudibranchs and I often write about my observations in the Field Journal series. I also have a particular interest in folklore and write a regular series on Folklore & Nature.
I have practiced what I’ve written for years about by creating a wildlife garden in my yard full of native plants, a pollinator garden and a wildlife pond. It is documented in Diary of an Urban Wild Garden.
During 2016 I challenged myself to experience and write about nature every day of the year, which I successfully completed in my 365 Nature Project. I had a month-long photo show in early 2017 with photography featuring Seattle’s urban nature. In 2017 I organized Seattle’s efforts in the national City Nature Challenge, a five day urban bioblitz.
I co-founded InverteFest and I founded the Nudibranch Appreciation Society and although you won’t find me on social media any more, you can find the Nudibranch Appreciate Society on this website and I regularly post about nudibranchs.
