LAWRENCE
LENHART

LAWRENCE LENHART is the author of the essay collections The Well-Stocked and Gilded Cage (Outpost19, 2016), Backvalley Ferrets: A Rewilding of the Colorado Plateau (University of Georgia: Crux, 2023), and Dry Safe & Together. Lenhart is co-librettist and composer of the cowpunk fantasia Pop Goes the Ferret!, a rock opera based on his essay collection. With Will Cordeiro, he co-wrote Experimental Writing: A Writer's Guide & Anthology (Bloomsbury Academic 2024). His prose appears in journals like Creative Nonfiction, Fourth Genre, Gulf Coast, Passages North, Prairie Schoner, Gulf Coast, Conjunctions, High Country News, and Orion. He is reviews editor of DIAGRAM and founding editor of Carbon Copy. His essays have been listed as notable in the Best American Essays series (2015, 2016, and 2018). 

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Lenhart studied writing at the University of Pittsburgh, holds an MFA from the University of Arizona, and is a doctoral candidate in education at Arizona State University. Lenhart is the Associate Chair of English at Northern Arizona University where he is also an Associate Professor of Creative Writing. He teaches courses in fiction, nonfiction, literary editing and publishing, and climate science narratives.

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As Executive Director of the Northern Arizona Book Festival, Lenhart brings fundraising, programming, and leadership expertise. His programming initiatives include the Indigenous Writers' Symposium, Young Readers' Festival, Flagstaff Off the Page, Whatever the Weather Series in Environmental Humanities, and Read the Room. Lenhart was recognized by the Arizona Daily Sun and the Greater Flagstaff Chamber of Commerce as a "20 Under 40" recipient for his work in nonprofit leadership.