Featured Speaker:

Melanie Choukas-Bradley, Author

Melanie Choukas-Bradley is the author of the forthcoming book, The Joy of Forest Bathing: Reconnect With Wild Places & Rejuvenate Your Life (Rock Point, August 2018) and four natural history books, including the highly acclaimed City of Trees: The Complete Field Guide to the Trees of Washington, DC. The Washington Post Book World called City of Trees: “A splendid field guide—practical, botanically sound, and filled with good stories.” The book has been published in three editions over a 37-year period.

Her recent book, A Year in Rock Creek Park—the Wild, Wooded Heart of Washington, DC, won an Independent Publishers IPPY award for Mid-Atlantic nonfiction. Melanie is also author of two books about Sugarloaf Mountain in Maryland. She is currently working on a book tentatively titled A Year at Theodore Roosevelt Island. Melanie leads tree tours, field trips and forest bathing walks for Smithsonian Associates, the Audubon Naturalist Society, the Nature Conservancy, the Rock Creek Conservancy, the U.S. Botanic Garden, Politics & Prose, the National Bonsai Foundation and Casey Trees. She lectures widely and has been a guest on NPR’s the Diane Rehm Show, Morning Edition, All Things Considered and WAMU’s the Kojo Nnamdi Show. In 2014 she was awarded one of four inaugural Canopy Awards by Casey Trees for her efforts to educate people about the trees of the nation’s capital. Melanie’s freelance articles have been published in The Washington Post and many other publications.