Writer

Stephen Pyne

Pyne received his bachelor’s degree at Standford University. He later attained his master’s (1974) and Ph.D. degrees (1976) at the University of Texas at Austin. A MacArthur Fellowship came to him in 1988. He has been awarded two National Endowment For the Humanities Fellowships (one to Antarctica), and has enjoyed two tours at the National Humanities Center. He was a professor at Arizona State University from 1985 through 2018. Pyne has published 30 books, mostly on wildfire. He spent fifteen seasons as a wildland firefighter at the North Rim of the Grand Canyon National Park between 1967 and 1981.

Articles

We need every tool to fight today’s fires

By Stephen Pyne

We know now that the largest recorded fire in New Mexico history was started by an escaped “prescribed burn,” or…

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Welcome to Yosemite, the new Pyrocene Park

By Stephen Pyne

The Pleistocene epoch that began 2.6 million years ago sent ice in waves through Yosemite. Glaciers gouged out great valleys…

Photo by Laurel Balyeat, Yosemite Park

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Our new age of fire

By Stephen Pyne

Fire in the West is expected, and not so long ago, it seemed something the West experienced more than anywhere…

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Houses Must be Built to Withstand Wildfire

By Stephen Pyne Jack Cohen

That the scene has become familiar makes it no less wrenching:  A distraught couple searches through the ash, char, and…

U.S. Forest Service Photo 2007. Grass Valley Fire in Southern California’s San Bernadino Mountains

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WILDFIRE IS MEANER THESE DAYS

By Stephen Pyne

As I look out my window, the smoke from the Bush fire is belching upward behind the fabled profile of…

Photograph by Marcus Kaufman, courtesy of Unsplash

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