Diane Ackerman
Bestselling Author, Poet & Naturalist
PEN Henry David Thoreau Prize Winner
Pulitzer Prize & NBCC Award Finalist
Readings &
Lecture Topics
- The Human Age: Why I’m Optimistic About Our Future
- Everyday Heroism: The Subversive Power of Compassion
- The Mind, the Brain, the Self—and How Love Changes Everything
- Being In Nature: the Art of Deep Attention
- Cultivating Delight: the Wonder of Everyday Life
- Eco-psychology & the Environment
Biography
“Diane Ackerman’s vivid writing, inexhaustible stock of insights, and unquenchable optimism have established her as a national treasure, and as one of our great authors.” —Jared Diamond
“Ackerman’s thrilling observations urge us to live in the moment, to wake up to nature’s everyday miracles.” —PEN Henry David Thoreau Prize
“Diane Ackerman is a great dramatist and explorer of the sensual world….There is no limit to her curiosity; she is constantly discovering surprises.” —The New York Times Book Review
The incandescent Diane Ackerman—celebrated interpreter of science and nature—is the author of two dozen highly acclaimed works of nonfiction and poetry, including The Zookeeper’s Wife and A Natural History of the Senses—books beloved by millions of readers all over the world. In prose so rich and evocative that one can feel the earth turning beneath one’s feet as one reads, Ackerman’s thrilling observations urge us to live in the moment, to wake up to nature’s everyday miracles.
Her forthcoming nonfiction, A Feast in Every Sense: The Marvel, Mystery and New Science of Our Senses (Random House, January 2027), returns to the territory of her beloved classic with fresh discoveries about how we perceive and inhabit the world. Ackerman’s poetry collection, The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral, was selected by Maria Popova for reissued by Marginalian Editions in 2026.
The Human Age: The World Shaped By Us, won the PEN Henry David Thoreau Prize for literary excellence in nature writing, honoring a book that “celebrates the natural world and human ingenuity, while exploring how the human race has become the single dominant force of change on the whole planet.” It was also a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book of 2014. The Zookeeper’s Wife (2008) tells the true story of Antonina and Jan Zabinski, Christian directors of the Warsaw Zoo during WWII, who saved over 300 doomed Jews by hiding them in the zoo cages. A New York Times bestseller for 54 weeks, it received the Orion Book Award and was adapted into a feature film starring Jessica Chastain in 2017. One Hundred Names for Love was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The Washington Post called it “an ode to playfulness and the brain’s plasticity…a testament to the power of creativity in language, life—and love.”
Other nonfiction titles include Dawn Light: Dancing with Cranes and Other Ways to Start the Day; An Alchemy of Mind, a poetics of the brain based on the latest neuroscience; Cultivating Delight: A Natural History of My Garden; Deep Play, which considers play, creativity, and our need for transcendence; A Slender Thread, about her work as a crisis line counselor; The Rarest of the Rare and The Moon by Whale Light, exploring endangered animals; A Natural History of Love; and On Extended Wings, her memoir of learning to fly.
Ackerman’s poetry has been published in leading literary journals. Her collections include I Praise My Destroyer; Origami Bridges: Poems of Psychoanalysis and Fire; Jaguar of Sweet Laughter: New and Selected Poems; Lady Faustus; Reverse Thunder: A Dramatic Poem; and Wife of Light. She also writes nature books for children, including Animal Sense, Monk Seal Hideaway, and Bats: Shadows in the Night.
Her essays about nature and human nature have appeared in The New York Times, Smithsonian, The New Yorker, National Geographic, Parade, and many other journals. She hosted a five-hour PBS television series inspired by A Natural History of the Senses.
Ackerman was born in Waukegan, Illinois. She received an MA, MFA, and PhD from Cornell University. Her many honors include the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication (2023), election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences (2016), the PEN Henry David Thoreau Prize, the Orion Book Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the John Burroughs Nature Medal, the Lavan Poetry Prize, The John O’Donohue Poetry Prize, and a D. Litt. from Kenyon College. She has been honored as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library and has taught at many universities, including Columbia, Washington University in St. Louis, and Cornell. She also has the distinction of having a molecule named after her— dianeackerone— which is a sex pheromone in pygmy crocodiles.
Short Bio
Poet, essayist, and naturalist, Diane Ackerman is the author of two dozen highly acclaimed works of nonfiction and poetry, including The Zookeeper’s Wife, A Natural History of the Senses, and The Human Age—books beloved by millions of readers all over the world. Her forthcoming book, A Feast in Every Sense (Random House, January 2027), returns to the sensory exploration of her beloved classic. A Pulitzer Prize Finalist, recipient of the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication, and member of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, Ackerman’s thrilling observations urge us to live in the moment, to wake up to nature’s everyday miracles.
Visit Author WebsiteVideos
Publications
A Feast In Every Sense: The Mystery, Marvel, and New Science of Our Senses
Nonfiction, 2027
A Feast in Every Sense is Diane Ackerman’s luscious and tender journey into the mystery of our modern sensory lives, a grand tour that captures the heady feelings of being alive. She introduces us to receptors that create the creamy sensation of a perfectly ripe avocado, sound waves that allow us to identify hot versus cold water by sound alone, skin sensors that lower pain and change brain chemistry at a lover’s touch.
The sensory universe colors every morsel of human existence. Why does sitting in a hard chair make you a harder bargainer? Why does Tylenol decrease empathy? Why does sipping a bitter drink invite harsher moral judgments? How does the time of day you receive a flu vaccine or an organ transplant affect its success? Is airplane food really that dull, or do our cravings and sense of taste warp at altitude? What sensory rebels have lived at the frontiers of perception? So many mysteries, good and bad, can only be understood through our senses.
Ackerman also uses new scientific discoveries, like our host of Secret Senses—ever-vigilant scouts—to explain life’s intricacies and understand how the world’s endless stimuli combine with our inner lives to form our deepest thoughts, feelings, hardships and joys.
Blending history, science, personal experience, and a poet’s eye, A Feast in Every Sense is both an ambrosial display of how we process the beauty around us and a call to rediscover what it means to be fully embodied and alive in a world brimming with wonders.
The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral
Poetry, 1973 & 2026
From Marginalian Editions comes a gorgeous reissue of celebrated poet and naturalist Diane Ackerman’s debut: a soaring ode to our solar system, planet to planet, blending science and imagination, astronomy and cosmology, as well as fantasy, satire, myth, and confession.
First published in 1973, The Planets: A Cosmic Pastoral introduced not only a splendid new poet but a whole new adventure in poetry. With bravura style, unbridled imagination, and a connoisseur’s eye for precise scientific detail, Diane Ackerman’s debut brought us an unforgettable ode to each planet in our solar system, not to mention the moon, the comet Kohoutek, and the asteroid belt, as well as strange voyages to the stars, the bottom of the sea, through the human body, and into the mind.
Diane Ackerman herself says: “I’ve always been baffled by people who write about nature only in terms of, say, junipers and cornfields, eschewing all things so-called ‘scientific,’ as if science were, per se, the spoil-sport of feeling. So wonderless a view of nature really doesn’t appeal to me.” The Planets is a rare fusion of art and science—one of the great poetic works of cosmic imagination.
The Human Age
(Nonfiction, 2014)
“The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us celebrates the natural world and human ingenuity, while exploring how the human race has become the single dominant force of change on the whole planet, and the many earth-shaking changes that now affect every part of our lives and those of our fellow creatures.” —PEN New England
Our finest literary interpreter of science and nature, Diane Ackerman is justly celebrated for her unique insight into the natural world and our place (for better and worse) in it. In this landmark book, she confronts the unprecedented fact that the human race is now the single dominant force of change on the planet. Humans have “subdued 75 percent of the land surface, concocted a wizardry of industrial and medical marvels, strung lights all across the darkness.” We now collect the DNA of vanishing species in a “frozen ark,” equip orangutans with iPads, create wearable technologies and synthetic species that might one day outsmart us. Ackerman takes us on an exciting journey to understand this bewildering new reality, introducing us to many of the people and ideas now creating—perhaps saving—our future. The Human Age is a beguiling, optimistic engagement with the earth-shaking changes now affecting every part of our lives and those of our fellow creatures—a wise book that will astound, delight, and inform intelligent life for a long time to come.
100 Names For Love
(Memoir, 2011)
“Ackerman’s writing about the brain is breathtaking; she paints a portrait of an eccentric and endearing marriage…She squares up her new normal so movingly that she hollowed out my chest…A splendid book.” —The Plain Dealer
No other writer can blend science of the brain with love of language like Diane Ackerman. In this extraordinary memoir, she opens a window into the experience of wordlessness—the language paralysis called aphasia. In narrating the recovery of her wordsmith husband, Paul West, from a stroke that reduced his vast vocabulary to a single syllable, she evokes the joy and mystery of the brain’s ability to use and connect words. Deeply rewarding to the literary reader, while also offering advice and support to the families of those afflicted by stroke, Ackerman has given us a rich trifecta: a literary love story, accessible insight into the science and medicine of brain injury, and invaluable spiritual sustenance in the face of life’s myriad physical sufferings. A reviewer from The Columbian called it, “One of the most beautiful biographies I’ve ever read.”
Dawn Light
(Nonfiction, 2009)
“Dawn Light extends far beyond a time of day into a general celebration of our continually renewed existence. We are not separate from those trees, the author insists; we are always in nature, of nature… In Ackerman’s view, it’s all knit together, this life on Earth, all connected and glorious. And there’s no better time to reexamine it than at first light.” —The LA Times Book Review
In the same way that medieval monks had “Books of Hours”, with suggested meditations and prayers for different hours of the day, Diane Ackerman’s Dawn Light is a “Book of Dawns”. Each short chapter is about a different dawn and a different facet of nature, chronicling the changing of the seasons over the course of a year, from January to December, in locales around the world. Dawn is also a metaphor for conscious awareness, as in, “it dawns on me that…..” So this book is also about trying to “wake up” to each passing moment. To that end, it is chock-full of small astonishments and secular hallelujahs. Like A Natural History of the Senses, Dawn Light is an exceptional example of the genre of which Diane Ackerman is the acknowledged master—the wide-ranging nature essay that also teaches us about ourselves. It is the product of a mind full of facts, inclined to poetry, and in love with not only all creatures great and small, but every weird and colorful adaptation of the natural world. Joining science’s devotion to detail with religion’s appreciation of the sublime, Dawn Light is an impassioned celebration of the miracles of evolution—especially human consciousness of our numbered days on a turning earth.
The Zookeeper's Wife
(Nonfiction, 2008)
“Here is a true story—of human empathy and its opposite—that is simultaneously grave and exuberant, wise and playful. Ackerman has a wonderful tale to tell, and she tells it wonderfully.” —Washington Post Book World
The Zookeeper’s Wife is about one of the most successful hideouts of World War II. It’s a tale of people, animals, transcendence, and subversive acts of compassion.” Jan Zabinski, the innovative director of the Warsaw Zoo, and Antonina, his empathic wife, lived joyfully on the zoo grounds during the 1930s with their young son, Ryszard (Polish for lynx), and a menagerie of animals needing special attention. The zoo was badly damaged by the Nazi blitzkrieg; and their bit of paradise would have been utterly destroyed but for the director of the Berlin Zoo, Lutz Heck, who wanted Jan’s help in resurrecting extinct ‘pure-blooded species’ in pursuit of Aryan perfection in the animal kingdom. Resourceful and courageous, the Zabinskis turned the decimated zoo into a refuge and saved the lives of several hundred imperiled Jews. Ackerman has written many stellar works, but this is the book she was born to write. Sharing the Zabinskis’ knowledge of and reverence for the natural world and drawing on her poet’s gift for dazzling metaphor, she captures with breathtaking precision and discernment our kinship with animals, the barbarity of war, Antonina’s unbounded kindness and keen delight in ‘life’s sensory bazaar,’ Jan’s daring work with the Polish Underground, and the audacity of the Zabinskis’ mission of mercy. An exemplary work of scholarship and an ‘ecstasy of imagining,’ Ackerman’s affecting telling of the heroic Zabinskis’ dramatic story illuminates the profound connection between humankind and nature, and celebrates life’s beauty, mystery, and tenacity.” —Booklist
Articles & Audio
Read What’s In Print
• Diane Ackerman on “The Zookeeper’s Wife” – Huffington Post
• A Conversation with ‘The Zookeeper’s Wife’ Author Diane Ackerman – Women and Hollywood
• ‘Zookeeper’s Wife’ author Diane Ackerman sees parallels between World War II and today – LA Times
• Review of The Human Age — The New York Times
• Review of The Human Age — The Washington Post
• Essay: “After a Stroke, Relearning Home” — New York Times
• Review of 100 Names for Love — New York Times Book Review
• Review of the The Human Age — Kirkus
• Interview with Diane Ackerman about The Zookeeper’s Wife — Powell’s Books
• What Diane Ackerman Can Teach Journalists
Listen to Audio
• “School Prayer” by Diane Ackerman – Cape and Islands
• The Me Epoch: Diane Ackerman in Discussion — Public Radio International
• Diane Ackerman Discusses The Human Age — The Diane Rehm Show
• Diane Ackerman on the Healing Power of Nature — Lion’s Roar
Selected Writings
• Read an excerpt from The Human Age: An Ex-Industrial Fisherman Rethinks His Job
ONE HUNDRED NAMES FOR LOVE (excerpt)
The tests revealed that Paul had a massive stroke, one tailored to his own private hell. In the cruelest of ironies for a man whose life revolved around words, with one of the largest working English vocabularies on earth, he had suffered immense damage to the key language areas of his brain and could no longer process language in any form. Though not visible in the CAT scan’s chiaroscuro world, other vital language areas had also wilted, leaving a labyrinth of fragile liaisons hushed. Global aphasia, it’s called. Paul’s aphasia was indeed global, round as his head, a grief encompassing our whole world. I’d never heard the expression before, and didn’t want to think about the full cartography of loss. Yet I had no choice, because someone had to make decisions about his care-informed, clear-headed decisions.
THE ZOOKEEPER’S WIFE (excerpt)
With blackout in effect and most of the animals gone, dawn no longer announced itself by spilling light into the bedroom and unleashing the zoo’s otherworldly chorale. One awoke in darkness and silence, the bedroom windows sealed with plywood and most of the animal calls either missing or muffled. In a quiet that dense, body sounds become audible, one hears blood surging and the bellows of the lungs. In a darkness that deep, fireflies dance across eyes that see into themselves.
