Meet Michael Branch: The author examines the environment using literary criticism—and humor 

When I arrived at Michael Branch’s house in southwest Reno, he greeted me with the same warm handshake and smile I had grown accustomed to since we first met in 2019, when I was an undergraduate in his Western film class at the University of Nevada, Reno.  

As he led me to the kitchen table, I was struck by the incredible view of the foothills stretching into the Sierra. Considering he is a professor emeritus of English, ecocritic, writer, humorist, environmentalist and the 2024 inductee into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame, it’s fitting that Branch has such a breathtaking view. 

For the first half of his career, Branch helped develop ecocriticism, a branch (if you will) of literary criticism that analyzes how the environment is represented in literature. Mid-career, he pivoted to writing humorous creative nonfiction about raising his two daughters with his wife, Eryn, in the Great Basin’s high desert. He cultivated a deep love for this landscape by walking thousands of miles through the hills and canyons surrounding his home.  

Given his intimate connection to the land and career as an ecocritic turned humorist, Branch is something like John Muir meets Jon Stewart. With his silver ponytail, neatly groomed facial hair and tall stature, he even looks a bit like a combination of the two. 

Branch’s reputation on campus was legendary. He was one of the professors from whom you had to take a class. Enshrouded in mythos, he loomed as a potentially intimidating figure due to his achievements. But to his students, he was just “Mike.” He perfected the teaching recipe, which is equal parts care and commitment to his students and passion for the material. He was the kind of teacher who makes you excited to go to class and participate—there was never a shortage of hands in the air during classroom discussions. 

During his career at the university, Branch never missed a single day of teaching.  

“I never took a sick day in 35 years, because I really love teaching,” he said. “I could have a day where everything went poorly, but if class went well, it was a good day.” 

In the mid-’80s, Branch, who grew up in Virginia, began visiting the West and fell in love with its landscapes.  

“My goal was always to get back out here,” he said.  

Growing up in the South, he felt pressured to conform to cultural norms. In Nevada, he found freedom both in the landscape and the culture.  

“There’s a certain live-and-let-live attitude,” he said. “‘Maybe I’m a rancher, but maybe gay rights don’t bother me, because nobody should tell you what to do.’” 

Branch was among the founders of the burgeoning ecocriticism field and came to UNR in 1995 to help build a specialty-track master’s and Ph.D. program in literature and environment within the English graduate program. He also co-founded the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE) and served as book review editor for the journal published by the organization, Interdisciplinary Studies in Literature and Environment (ISLE). Branch helmed the graduate program, which had more than 100 students—who are “all over now”—for 16 years.  

“It was really a wonderful community, and it meant so much to me,” Branch said. “We helped to build a field, and that made room for a lot of people who wanted to teach this work, to be able to teach it and create a kind of theoretical underpinning that gave it credibility. But I did that work. It has been fun to move on to this second career as a creative writer.” 

Branch’s transition to humor writing was spurred by his observation that environmental writing was starting to break down into predictable narratives of anger and grief. Given the very real effects of climate change, being angry and sad makes sense, but as Branch pointed out, there’s only so much that we can take before we feel discouraged and hopeless. Whereas, “Humor lets you blow off steam,” he said. “What I like best about it as an environmental writer is that humor can be welcoming and self-deprecating. It tells the reader, ‘Hey, I’m not going to preach at you. Let’s figure this out together.’” 

In his third book, How to Cuss in Western, Branch cites three forces that sustain him: place, family and humor. Walking thousands of miles each year in the wilderness near his home, Branch developed a deep intimacy with the land.  

“The environment is an abstraction we can study, value and manage, but a place is something we can love,” he writes. His work encourages readers to think about and protect the places they love. This love for the land, coupled with his unique humor stylings, enables Branch to connect with people and get them to think about the environment in ways that academic and scientific writing simply cannot. 

“Humor is not just something to brush off—it can affect real change,” Branch said, citing recent research that shows humor can be more effective than lectures in changing minds about climate change. “We’re hardwired for stories as a species. And too often, we try to tackle problems with data and information. You would think information would change people’s minds, but it doesn’t; stories change people’s minds. And so, the role of the arts is to translate our challenges and our opportunities into the kinds of narratives that the guy who’s sitting at the bar, who didn’t mean to be there for this event, can’t stop listening to, because a story is being told.”  

For Branch, being inducted into the Nevada Writers Hall of Fame is more than just a celebration of his achievement—it’s a community.  

“It’s not just your name on a wall,” he said. “It’s a meaningful network of relationships among writers who nurture and inspire each other.”  

Branch has been a part of that community since he received the Hall of Fame’s Silver Pen Award in 2017, an award meant to encourage a writer who has great potential, after publishing his first creative book, Raising Wild: Dispatches From a Home in the Wilderness.  

“It really put the wind in my sails and encouraged me,” he said. 

While he retired from regular teaching, Branch views his writing as an extension of it. He is currently working on a book about the 31-year fight by rural Nevadans against a proposed Las Vegas water grab. This diverse coalition—including tribal members, ranchers, poets and futurists—successfully stopped the project. 

“It’s inspiring because there aren’t a lot of clear environmental wins,” Branch said. “This story shows how people organized, fought— and won.”