Book: This is How a Robin Drinks: Essays on Urban Nature (Trinity University Press, Sept, 2024)
Book #2, in-progress:
a Nashville-centric book about Hackberry trees. Part field guide, natural history, memoir, apologia, almanac.
APPEARANCES / INTERVIEWS:
March 22, 2025, keynote speaker for the Nashville Native Plant Symposium
Sept. 24, 2024: Book launch, “In conversation with Margaret Renkl” at Parnassus Books, Sept. 24, 6:30pm
Sept 28, 2024: Author talk at Warner Park Nature Center, 10:30am, 13+, register wpnc@nashville.gov. Link. Parnassus Books will be there with copies of “This is How a Robin Drinks.”
Oct. 24, 2024: Southern Festival of Books, panel at 3pm, Duck Room (!), TN State Museum, link.
-Nashville Scene interview with Kim Baldwin: “Talking with Author Joanna Brichetto” 9/20/24
-Channel 4 “Today in Nashville,” interview with Carole Sullivan: “Nashville’s Sidewalk Naturalist Previews Upcoming Book “This is How a Robin Drinks”” 9/9/24
-Channel 5 News interview by Aaron Cantrell: “‘A regularly scheduled miracle’ Certified Tennessee naturalist encourages community to embrace cicadas” (link)
-“Representing Nature,” Nashville Bestiary Project, panelist. 3/29/24 Robert Penn Warren Center, Vanderbilt University
–The Wall Street Journal “Meet the Neighbors Who Want to Steal Your Leaves,” by Sarah Nassauer, Dec. 28, 2023 (link)
–Volunteer Gardener clip: “Leave the Leaves” Sept. 2023
–Volunteer Gardener tip: “Mosquito Bucket of Doom“,” June 2023.
–This is Nashville, radio show WPLN “The Buzz About Pollinators” March 2023
–This is Nashville, radio show WPLN “Urban Animals” Jan. 2023
–Mark Fraley Podcast, guest (as a volunteer naturalist), Sept. 21, 2022
–Volunteer Gardener tv episode: “Native plants hiding in plain sight” Aug. 2022
SELECTED ESSAYS:
Hummingbird Winter (Short Reads)
Brief, Recognizable Features (Rooted 2: the Best New Arboreal Nonfiction)
Guided (Ecotone)
This is How a Robin Drinks (Creative Nonfiction Sunday Short Reads)
This is How a Robin Drinks (Brevity)
Dragonfly, Secondhand (The Hopper) (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Same Bat-Time (Stonecrop Review)
House Wren (Fourth Genre)
Winter Solstice (Chapter 16)
It Was a Yellow-Billed Cuckoo (The Common: Dispatch)
Bring Back the Bones (Flyway Journal of Writing & Environment)
What White Tree is Blooming Now (The Hopper) (Nominated for a Pushcart Prize)
Climbing the Walls (Talking Writing anthology, Into Sanity)
Can’t Eat Just One (City Creatures Blog)
Along Came a Spider (City Creatures Blog)
Eponymous (About Place Journal)
Raptor Ready (Longleaf Review)
Animal, Vegetable, or Mineral (Vine Leaves Literary Journal)
Naked Ladies and Cicadas (Hippocampus)
A Dandelion Is To Blow (storySouth) (New Millennium Award finalist)
With Luck More Seasonable (Animal: a Beast of a Literary Magazine)
What a Butterfly Means (Tributaries: Fourth River)
Field Trip Leavings (Fourth River)
A Wiped Wall Gathers No Mold (Dead Housekeeping)
Nature of the Material (The Ilanot Review)
Bud Wiser (Jewish Literary Journal)
Bloom is a Jewish Name (Killing the Buddha)
Teaching Your Kids How to Track Animals at Home (GeekDad)
Mother’s Day: Give and Take (Mamalode)
Witnessing With Wildflowers (Bible Belt Balabusta)
The Iconography of Tam Tams (Gone Jewish)
An Osage Exposé (Garden Rant)
Clementine, My Darling: an Almost-Memoir (The Normal School online)
I also invented the Pezuzah in 2011 (article here and here). And, I might’ve been the first to post about DIY graggers and dreidels made of LEGO (graggers (here and here), dreidels (here, here, here).
Joanna Brichetto
• MA, Graduate Department of Religion, Vanderbilt University 2006
• Tennessee Naturalist Program certification 2012
I coined the name “Mosquito Bucket of Doom” in May 2022 (link) while adding the stick (for 2 crucial functions):
And here’s my quote and me in the pic for Sarah Nassauer’s article in the WSJ:
SIDEWALK NATURE 