Margaret Renkl is the author of The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, which won the 2024 Southern Book Prize and was Reese’s Book Club’s 100th pick. Her earlier books are Late Migrations: A Natural History of Love and Loss (2019), which won the Reed Environmental Writing Award in 2020; and Graceland, At Last: Notes on Hope and Heartache From the American South (2021), which won both the Southern Book Prize and the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award for the Art of the Essay in 2022. The companion journal for The Comfort of Crows—Leaf, Cloud, Crow: A Weekly Backyard Journal—appeared in 2024. Her first picture book, The Weedy Garden, is out now.
For nine years (2017-2026) Renkl was a contributing Opinion writer for The New York Times. Her column focused on the flora, fauna, politics, and culture of the American South. (You can read the entire archive here.)
The founding editor of Chapter 16, a daily literary publication of Humanities Tennessee, and a graduate of Auburn University and the University of South Carolina, she lives in Nashville.
Check in with Margaret on Facebook, Instagram, and BlueSky.
Margaret’s Team
Publicity, HarperCollins
Lindsey Triebel
Publicity, Spiegel & Grau
Nicole Dewey
Literary Agent, Empire Literary
Kristyn Keene Benton
Speaking Agent, Authors Unbound
Christie Hinrichs
View my speaker profile here.
Downloadable Media Materials
High-res author photo for Margaret Renkl
credit William DeShazer
High-res book jacket for The Weedy Garden
High-res book jacket for Late Migrations
High-res book jacket for Graceland, At Last
High-res book jacket for Graceland, At Last (paperback)
High-res book jacket for The Comfort of Crows
High-res book jacket for Leaf, Cloud, Crow
