Diane Ackerman
Diane Ackerman is the author of 24 works of nonfiction and poetry. Her works include the New York Times best sellers The Human Age: The World Shaped by Us, which received the PEN Henry David Thoreau Award; One Hundred Names for Love, a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Circle Critics Award; The Zookeeper’s Wife, recipient of the Orion Book Award; and A Natural History of the Senses, which inspired a PBS series that Ackerman would host, Mystery of the Senses. Among her honors are a Guggenheim Fellowship, John Burroughs Nature Award, Lavan Poetry Prize, and D.Litt. from Kenyon College. She also has the distinction of having a molecule named after her. She has taught at various universities, including Columbia and Cornell. Her essays about nature and human nature have been appearing for decades in the New York Times, Smithsonian, the New Yorker, National Geographic, and other journals. Diane Ackerman received a Bachelor of Arts in English from Pennsylvania State University and a Master of Arts, Master of Fine Arts, and Ph.D. from Cornell University.