2023 Award Recipient - Kathryn Wilder
Congratulations to our 2023 award winner, Kathryn Wilder, for her project "The Last cows.”
Kathryn Wilder holds a Master’s degree in creative writing from Northern Arizona University and a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is a widely published writer whose works have appeared in Terrain.org, High Desert Journal, High Country News, River Teeth, Fourth Genre, and a dozen anthologies of southwestern literature and nature writing. Several of her works have been cited as Notable in Best American Essays.
Ms. Wilder is the author of Desert Chrome: Water, a Woman, and Wild Horses in the West (Torrey House Press, 2021), winner of the Colorado Book Award.
Like Ellen Meloy, Kathryn Wilder descended from a multi-generation California ranching family, and also like Ellen, Ms. Wilder found the home closest to her heart in the desert country of the Colorado Plateau, where she now ranches with her son near Dolores. They run a herd of Criollo cattle, a heritage breed that originated in Spain.
“Much smaller than other European breeds, Criollos are uniquely adapted to the desert,” she wrote. Her proposed book, “The Last Cows”, will be a work of literary nonfiction that will attempt to convey “the qualms, joys, challenges, and heartbreaks of contemporary ranching in the desert Southwest.”
Ms. Wilder’s narrative will deliberately explore politically fraught territory. Much of the land her cattle graze lies within the domain managed by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, an agency charged with overseeing 245 million acres of public land, much of it fragile desert. Amid ceaseless controversy, BLM and other agencies determine grazing capacities in an allocation system reaching back to the 1930s. As Ms. Wilder states, “Many old-time ranchers wish to continue ranching within this system as they always have — running as many big cows as they possibly can. Many environmental groups would like to see all cattle removed from all public land. Raising beef has become political, and I wonder if there’s any middle ground left. I want to find out, and I want to share those findings.”
The grant offered by the Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Fund will support research for Ms. Wilder’s book. She plans to visit other arid ranches across the Southwest, with a special emphasis on ranchers and researchers who also work with Criollo cattle. She stated that one intention in writing “The Last Cows” is “to consider whether the integrity of our program — Criollo cattle, holistic management practices, and organically raised, grass-fed-and-finished beef sold through local markets — is enough to support a regenerative relationship between cattle and desert.”
As to the significance of her proposed project, Ms. Wilder said, “Not enough has been told of the desert West from a woman’s perspective that combines environmental thinking with a ranching lifestyle. In looking at the marriage of cattle and desert and questioning traditional and alternative ranching practices, this book will add the unique perspective and desert sensibility of a female-environmentalist-cowboy-rancher to the literature of the Colorado Plateau and beyond.”
In a statement she wrote in response to hearing news of winning the 2023 Meloy Award, Ms. Wilder, who knew Ellen Meloy personally, said, “I called Ellen my friend. She called me her California sister. We both found the river and words on the Colorado Plateau — and great love for desert air on naked skin, for redrock the color of our hearts. I have worked persistently to win this award for the recognition it gives me as a desert writer, yes, and for the support of this project that starts, like Ellen and me, with a background of agriculture, but even more importantly for the connection it gives me to Ellen, who guides my writing from afar as she did when we were friends those many years ago.”
In a departure from the Fund’s tradition, the board of directors elected to honor two writers, instead of one, with the 2023 Ellen Meloy Desert Writers Award. Along with Kathryn Wilder, the Fund selected Mark Sundeen as a 2023 award winner.