Jack Nisbet
Spokane-based teacher and naturalist Jack Nisbet grew up in North Carolina and moved to eastern Washington in 1971. His writing begins with the interaction of human and natural history in the greater Northwest. Nisbet’s works include Purple Flat Top; Singing Grass, Burning Sage; Visible Bones; and two books about the pioneer fur trader and cartographer David Thompson: Sources of the River and The Mapmaker’s Eye. Nisbet’s most recent project, The Collector, explores the encounters of Scottish naturalist David Douglas with the landscape and cultures of the New World.
Together these books have won the Murray Morgan Prize, Washington Governor’s Award, the American Library Association’s Best of the Best University Press Publications, and Book of the Year designations from The Seattle Times, Idaho and Washington State Libraries, and the Pacific Northwest Bookseller’s Association. Nisbet has also consulted on a dozen documentary films and museum exhibits, including an exhibition about the worlds of David Douglas that will open in Washington in fall 2012.
