Michael P. Branch is an award-winning writer who has long explored the culture of the American West. His writing has appeared multiple times in The Best American Essays, The Best American Science and Nature Writing, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, and the annual Pushcart Prize anthologies, and in magazines such as Orion, Slate, Outside, and Pacific Standard. A graduate of the College of William and Mary (BA), and the University of Virginia (MA, PhD), Branch is a professor of English and a professor of literature and environment at the University of Nevada, Reno, where he teaches creative nonfiction, humor studies, popular science writing, and environmental literature.