Gretchen Ernster Henderson writes across environmental arts, cultural histories, and integrative sciences. Her recent essays have appeared in Ecotone, Ploughshares, and the Kenyon Review, with co-authored articles in Nature Sustainability and Conservation Biology. Her four previous books include Ugliness: A Cultural History and Galerie de Difformité, cross-pollinating genres and arts and translated across five languages. She is a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin and has also taught at Georgetown University, MIT, and the University of Utah, where she was the 2018–19 Annie Clark Tanner Fellow in Environmental Humanities. Born and raised in California, she is the 2023 Aldo and Estella Leopold Writer in Residence in New Mexico and lives in Arizona.