Heather Easterling is a professor of English at Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, where she teaches a range of classes, including on Shakespeare, on poetry, on war literature, and on 20th-21st century Naturalist literature in a field-based program. Heather moved West from New York State after college to be an outdoor educator and found her way to graduate school in Seattle after several years of trip-leading: she was and still is drawn to the mountains and to wilderness, and getting to teach Naturalist literature/literature of the Environment in outdoor or non-traditional settings enables her to combine and share her love of literature and her passion for exploring the complex relationships between ourselves and the more-than-human world.