Melanie Lenart, Ph.D.
ABOUT MELANIE LENART
She wrote the critically acclaimed non-fiction book, Life in the Hothouse: How a Living Planet Survives Climate Change, after earning a master’s in forestry and a Ph.D. focused on climate change and doing postdoctoral research for the University of Arizona’s Climate Assessment for the Southwest.
Published in 2010, the book describes why intense hurricanes and large-scale wildfires would only worsen as the globe continued to heat up. Although the UA Press book presaged today’s abundant “natural disasters,” it also provides some hope by considering how the planet survived warmer times of the past 100 million years.
Melanie Lenart launched her career as journalist, winning a Hearst award for investigative reporting while still in college, and circled back to writing for a living in 2020 after many years of weaving writing around full-time work teaching or carrying out scientific research.
Over the years, Lenart has focused on environmental issues as a reporter and weekly columnist for the Pulitzer-prize winning San Juan Star and written for other publications including Scientific American, Environment, High Country News and Nature Climate Change.
She currently writes features for Native Science Report and is working on a speculative fiction trilogy set in southern Arizona, where she lives with her spouse in a setting that provides an unimpeded view of the sun setting over the Quinlan and Coyote mountains.