About Boyce

Boyce Upholt is a “nature critic” whose writing probes the relationship between humans and the rest of the natural world, especially in the U.S. South.

Boyce grew up in the Connecticut suburbs and holds a bachelor’s degree from Haverford College and an MFA from the Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. He moved to the Mississippi Delta in 2009, where he discovered an unexpected wilderness amid an agricultural empire: the Mississippi River, which for hundreds of miles offers a corridor of islands and sandbars and wetland forests, with no settlement or development.

An obsession with how this wild place came to persist, despite so much change and engineering, inspired a wider interest in the strange nature of “nature” itself—this thing that we call separate but are really a part of. Boyce’s work ranges from straightforward journalism and science writing to travel writing that invites readers to better connect with the “more-than-human” world.

His work has been published in the Atlantic, National Geographic, the Oxford American, and Virginia Quarterly Review, among other publications, and was awarded the 2019 James Beard Award for investigative journalism. His stories have been noted in the Best American Science & Nature and Best American Nonrequired Reading series. Boyce lives in New Orleans.

boyce@boyceupholt.com

2024

Mapping the Mississippi / Smithsonian // How American laid claim to the big river, one mile at a time

Secrets of the Swamp / The New Republic // A powerful nonprofit, closely allied with the Florida governor, sued one of its former scientists for stealing trade secrets. What was it really after?

A Fundamental Boundary: What the Mississippi Means to America / LitHub // Exploring the meaning of waterways

This Land is My Land: Inside the Growing Fight Over Conservation / Mother Jones // From delisting endangered species to fearmongering about national parks, American Stewards of Liberty want to remake the West.

The Arkansas Lithium Rush / Yale Environment 360 // The Smackover Formation in southern Arkansas was once a major oil producer. Now, companies hope to extract lithium.

Toward a Truly Compostable Plastic / Knowable // Materials scientists are cooking up environmentally friendly polymers from natural sources like silk, plant fibers, and whole algae

Sitting in the Silence / Virginia Quarterly Review // In the mountains of northern California, an art exhibit for aliens

2023

The Unending Quest to Build a Better Chicken / Noema / December 2023 // Maybe what we need is not just a new form of poultry farming but a complete revolution in how we relate to meat

Pushing Boundaries in No Man’s Land / The Local Palate / September 2023 // A food tour along a blurry edge of “the South”

Photographing the Parks / Wildsam / July 2023 // Reflections on photographing the “wild,” from the first national park to today’s era of cell phone saturation

Inside the Quest to Engineer Climate-Saving ‘Super Trees’ / MIT Technology Review / June 2023 // A Silicon Valley startup wants to supercharge trees to soak up more carbon and cool the climate. Is this the great climate solution or a whole lot of hype?

Is the ‘Age of the Delta’ Coming to an End? / Knowable / June 2023 // River deltas h ave been essential to both people and wildlife for thousands of years. But recent shifts have brought on some rapid losses that worry scientists.

Monuments Upon the Tumultuous Earth / Emergence / March 2023 // For thousands of years, Indigenous societies were building elaborate earthworks along the wild waterway of the Mississippi River. What do our modern monuments along the river say about who we are—and the crises we face?

Louisiana’s Paragliding Photographer / Garden & Gun / March 2023 // From his perch in the sky, Ben Depp snapped these hauntingly beautiful images of the disappearing Gulf Coast

The Frightening Cost of Cheap Eggs / The New Republic / February 2023 // All the news coverage has been about how bird flu has increased egg prices. But maybe those cheap eggs already cost us too much.

older work

mississippi river

The Controversial Plan to Unleash the Mississippi / Hakai + WIRED / July 2022 // Our long history of constraining the river through levees has led to massive land loss in its delta. Can we engineer our way out? And at what cost?

Atchafalaya Mud / Bitter Southerner / January 2022 // No one can agree on what one of the country’s most iconic wilderness is supposed to look like. How do you conserve a landscape when the only constant is change?

America’s Largest River Swamp / Southerly / December 2020 // A photographer and writer visit some of the hardest-to-reach corners of the Atchafalaya Basin

Good-Bye to Good Earth / Oxford American / Fall 2019 // A tribe’s long fight against an American Tide

The promise of the Yazoo Pumps / Southerly / October 2019 // A massive flood in the Mississippi Delta has kicked off renewed discussions of controversial infrastructure. At its heart, the debate is a question what this place is — and what we want it to be

The Mississippi Is Under Control—For Now / TIME / August 2019 // The Mississippi River is contained and controlled by one of the most ambitious systems of engineering on the globe. But as the climate changes, how much longer can the system hold?

Beyond the Levee / Oxford American / Summer 2019 // On moonshine, climate change, and the ever-wild Mississippi.

America’s River 2.0 / Sierra Magazine / Summer 2018 // Paddling the Mississippi River is not a Huck Finn journey anymore.

After the Oxbow / Undark / January 2017 // Along the Mississippi River, largely beyond our notice, an essential wildlife habitat is beginning to disappear. Can it be saved?

Wild Miles on the Big River / Bitter Southerner / July 2015 // The Mississippi River is big, dangerous, industrialized—and wild. John Ruskey wants you to join him there.

science & nature & environment

Will the Next Pandemic Start with Chickens? / The New Republic / October 2022 // A virulent strain of bird flu ripped through U.S. farms in 2022. The public hardly noticed. That we could ignore the disease shows just how little we’ve learned about the origin of new viruses

The Meaning of Air / Emergence / November 2020 // To understand the wilderness, you’ll need to look beyond the rocks and trees

Eaters of the Earth / The Counter / April 2020 // How the fertilizer industry leaves a trail of destruction across the American South

The Spillway Versus the Oysters / The New Food Economy / September 2019 // A flood-control system meant to protect New Orleans has wreaked havoc on coastal ecosystems, killing saltwater species in a deluge of redirected river water

A Killing Season / The New Republic / December 2018 // Monsanto’s new herbicide was supposed to save U.S. farmers from financial ruin. Instead, it upended the agriculture industry, pitting neighbor against neighbor in a struggle for survival.

An Interstate Battle for Groundwater / The Atlantic / December 2015 // Mississippi and Tennessee are locked in a dispute over who can use the Delta’s aquifers.

the culture of nature

A Congress of the Trees / Noēma / September 2022 // The philosopher Jonathon Keats wants to incorporate the world’s plants and animals into our democratic systems

How the Bass Pro Shops Pyramid Became a Memphis Icon / Outside / August 2022 // Twenty-four hours inside one of the strangest wildernesses in the world

Saguaro, Free of the Earth / Emergence / March 2022 // The O’odham peoples of the Sonoran Desert have long revered the saguaro cactus as a being with personhood. Can the idea help bring down the border wall?

Down to the Tide Line / Bitter Southerner / August 2022 // As Rachel Carson knew, every beach and coastline has its own story to tell

The Quest for a Floating Utopia / Hakai / April 2021 // Can casting away to inhabit sea-based colonies save us from the problems of modern life—or are we bound to repeat our mistakes?

Parks Are Closing—But Wilderness is All Around You / Outside / March 2020 // Social distancing is a prime opportunity to redefine our idea of what’s wild

The Many Voyages of Walter Anderson / Bitter Southerner / May 2018 // The beloved painter had a deep connection with the natural world--but it came at a cost.

food & travel

What Makes the Buffalo the Jewel of the Ozarks / Smithsonian / July & August 2022 // An unabashed tribute to the wild Arkansas waterway that became the nation’s first national river 50 years ago

Island Life Goes On / The Local Palate / February 2020 // Buffeted by hurricanes and political turmoil, Puerto Rico’s next step is certain. One thing is clear, though: the food will be divine.

The troubling economics of food halls / Heated / October 2019 // What lies beneath the Instagrammable veneer of the food hall? In at least some cases, a perfect capitalistic machine.

Louisiana’s Reckoning Tide / The Local Palate / May 2019 // In the face of land loss, chefs are looking for what comes next.

Down Delta Back Roads / The Local Palate / August 2018 // Put away your phone: the gems of Highway 1 are unmapped

Up All Night on Farish Street / Bitter Southerner / August 2016 // What does it say that it’s only deep into the night in the illicit glowing neon of a juke joint when we can muster the courage to come together, black and white?

A Pageant in Catfish Country / Roads & Kingdoms / May 2014 // In the Mississippi Delta, farmed catfish swim in a deep pond of politics, history, and big business.

The Hot Tamales of Issaquena County / Roads & Kingdoms / December 2013 // On the hunt for an unexpected Southern staple