Would you go down the Colorado river in a couple of homemade rowboats with a guide that had never been down the river? That is exactly what two women botanists from the University of Michigan did in 1938 to become the first women known to have travel 600 miles/965 kilometers down the Colorado river through the Grand Canyon. Want to know more? Stay tuned…. Brave the Wild River podcast is now available on the Behind the Scenery Podcast series.

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TRANSCRIPT:

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Wallis: Hi this is Wallis, and today we are featuring an interview with Melissa Sevigny, award winning author in her spare time and science reporter for KNAU in Flagstaff. In this episode Melissa will tell us about her career path and how she went from wanting to be a geologist to working as a science reporter and writing an award winning book.

Wallis: Ok, well we are here today with Melissa Sevigny, author, science reporter and let’s get started. Hey Melissa, Melissa: So great to be here.

Wallis: So great to have you here. A lot of interview questions are the kinds of things that you might expect. A sort of letting our listeners get to know you so let’s do a few of those questions. I see from your bio that you started out with a degree in Environmental Science and Policy but now you are an award-winning writer and journalist. Was writing something you always wanted to do?

Melissa: You know, not really, actually which is funny um I have always written things ever since I was a little girl but I always wanted to be a geologist. That, that was my dream. Um and so I stuck with that all the way up until I enrolled in the university of Arizona and I enrolled in an Environmental Science degree which I figured would be geology with some trees added on top you know but somewhere along the way I just I can’t even describe it I got pulled away by writing I just kept taking more and more writing classes and taking jobs that helped me learn how to communicate science to the public and it kind of just stole me away it was not intentional. I never imagined I would be a writer but somehow here I am.

Wallis: But there you are. So I have a follow-on question to that is tell us a little bit how you went from environmental science to the MFA program at Iowa State University and from there to being a science reporter for KNAU?

Melissa: You know it’s not a very exciting story. When I was applying for grad schools I didn’t really know what I wanted to do. I had ended up with a double major in environmental science and creative writing and I was sort of stuck between those 2 loves and so I applied for a bunch of programs some in sciences and some in writing and some in science writing and I really didn’t know what I was doing and uh the program that had full funding was this environmental creative writing program at Iowa State University and so that is where I ended up. Um I think it is good to share that story with young people who feel like maybe they need to know what their path is gonna be like. I had no idea what I was doing. I went and got that creative writing degree, I graduated, I was unemployed. I didn’t know what to do with that degree. it was such a weird mix of skills I had kind of cultivated and then this job came up for a science reporter for the NPR station in Flagstaff and I wanted to come back home to Arizona, this is where I grew up so I applied a little bit on a whim. I didn’t know if I was qualified or if I could get the job um but I did and I’ve been there 10 years and it has really taught me a lot about uh talking about science to the public.

Wallis: That’s very interesting and so like many people you didn’t have a direct career path but you just kind of followed your heart.

Melissa: Exactly yeah.

Wallis: Well what makes communicating science exciting and challenging right now? So as both an author and a science reporter for KNAU what differences do you see in the various mediums of science communication? And what methods do you think are most effective?

Melissa: That is such an interesting question because there are so many more methods now than even when I was little you know um there is social media and there’s video and there are podcasts like this one. There is just so many wonderful ways to reach out to people and I think the most effective way is the way that works for the audience you want to reach. I mean I think they all, they all can work for different people um and so I am glad there is people out there doing all of those kinds of things. You know the kind of person who would pick up a book like you know what I have written um isn’t the same kind of person who is going to listen to a podcast or listen to a video on YouTube so it it is an exciting time. There is a lot of different ways to communicate science and for me maybe the most exciting thing is just that science is exciting and my goal is to make it as accessible as possible. I want people to feel like they can do science, they can be scientists. It doesn’t matter what your background is or your age is. You don’t have to be this image of uh a wild haired genius locked away in an ivory tower someplace. That is not what a scientist is. You know, really it boils down to if you are curious and observing the world around you and all of us do that naturally as kids you know and it is something we sort of grow out of and so my goal with communication is to show people how exciting it is to tap into that curiosity.

Wallis: Great! Let’s move on. Now your book Brave the Wild River was published last year and I thoroughly enjoyed reading it this spring. This wonderful book, in case you don’t know, was the 2024 Southwest book of the year top pick, a 2024 Reading the West Award for memoir/biography, and the 2023 National outdoor book award for history/biography. Now as a woman scientist I am always interested in the women scientists who came before me. So, the questions I would like to ask you are how did you learn about or get interested in Elzada Clover and Lois Jotter? And sort of a follow on to that would be what spurred your interest in the women and why did you think this was an important or timely story you thought needed to be told?

Melissa: I really just stumbled across their story. I was looking for something else I don’t remember what it was and I was fishing around online at the special collections department at Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff and this um this hyperlink popped up and it said women botanists. And I was curious so I clicked on it and there was just one name in the file and the name was Lois Jotter and I read the description and I learned that she had gone down the Colorado river through Grand Canyon in 1938 with her mentor Elzada Clover and they were both botanists from Michigan and they made the first formal plant collection of over 600 miles of the Colorado river and I was so surprised that I had never heard of them before. You know I grew up in Arizona, I thought I knew a lot about Colorado river history and yet I had never encountered their names. And so I just started started poking around um Lois was a packrat she kept all kinds of material, her diaries, her letters from this trip and that was all at Northern Arizona University and so I started going over there on my lunch breaks and just kind of like looking around in the story and I got so drawn into it and eventually I started to write and pretty soon I realized that I had I had a book. I was writing a book um it took me a while to come to that realization but I was just really drawn to their story exactly for the reason you said. You know it’s amazing to hear about the women scientists that have come before us. There are so many of them out there but often their stories kind of get lost. They sort of fall through the cracks and so I wanted to to bring this story kind of back to the forefront so that when people are coming to places like the Grand Canyon or they are interested in doing science. You know I think I think it makes us feel a little less alone when we see people like ourselves throughout history who were doing that work.

Wallis: Oh I agree I uh used this book as a basis for several programs and at my last program I had a woman who was a graduate student in botany and she was with her family and her mother said do you know about these women and she said I had never heard of them. And that was really shocking to me, so I am glad that you found the link and are bringing them forward.

Melissa: Thank you.

Wallis: Now do you feel there are any special challenges in telling a story that is not well know like this story and we like to call them deferred stories rather than researching and retelling a more dominant narrative? Do you think it is a little harder?

Melissa: Yeah that is such a great question I um I hadn’t heard that phrase before, deferred story and I really like that. They are kind of stories that just haven’t quite been told yet for whatever the reason. Um there are challenges with it but I am drawn to that type of story because because I think, I don’t know I just I get really fascinated by stories that that haven’t really been told before at least not in the kind of extensive format, in a book format. Um and so that really draws me in I just I I want to be able to to kind of chart new ground when I am writing, and chart a new path and so that attracted me to this story. Some of the the challenge is just: is the archival material there? When you are doing stories out of history you have gotta have those primary sources, so you have got to have archives and I was really lucky that Lois Jotter and Elzada Clover both kept their diaries. They kept extensive notes and they both had the foresight to donate those to universities before they passed away. And if it wasn’t for that I probably wouldn’t have been able to write the book because I wouldn’t have had their point of view. Um and