PERRI KNIZE is an award-winning environmental policy reporter whose articles and essays have appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Audubon, Sports Illustrated, Conde Nast Traveler, and Outside. She was educated in philosophy and Russian at the University of Michigan, studied piano at the Mannes College of Music, worked as a poster and book designer in Manhattan, volunteered as a wilderness ranger on the Beaverhead National Forest in Montana, and received her Master's degree in journalism at Columbia University. She has a been a reporter at New York Newsday and Newsweek, a freelancer at The New York Times, and has taught journalism at the University of Montana. She lives with her husband in Montana.