The 2025 Henry David Thoreau Prize for Literary Excellence in Nature Writing, known as the Thoreau Prize, will be awarded to Robert Macfarlane. The Thoreau Prize is a literary award granted annually to an accomplished writer in English who, with a comparable intensity, wishes to speak for nature and embodies the spirit of Thoreau as a gifted writer, insightful naturalist, and ethical thinker. Join the Thoreau Society for a presentation by this year’s award winner, Robert Macfarlane, on June 7, followed by a book signing. Robert Macfarlane is internationally renowned for his writing on nature, people, and place. His best-selling books include Underland, Landmarks, The Old Ways, The Wild Places, and Mountains of the Mind; they have been translated into more than thirty languages, won many prizes around the world and been widely adapted for film, music, theatre, radio, and dance. He has also written operas, plays, and films including River and Mountain, both narrated by Willem Dafoe. He has collaborated with artists including Olafur Eliasson and Stanley Donwood, and with the artist Jackie Morris he co-created the internationally best-selling books of nature-poetry and art, The Lost Words and The Lost Spells. In 2017, the American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded him the E. M. Forster Prize for Literature. Macfarlane lives in Cambridge, England, where he is a fellow of Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Macfarlane’s newest book, Is a River Alive?, is scheduled for publication in May 2025. Called by The Guardian “one of the big publishing events (if not the biggest) of 2025,” Is a River Alive? takes readers to threatened river systems on three continents: the cloud forests of Ecuador, the creeks and lagoons of southern India, and the Mutehekau or Magpie River of northeastern Quebec. At its heart is a single, transformative idea: that rivers are not mere matter for human use, but living beings – who should be recognized as such in both imagination and law.