2022 Alumni Medalist Nezhukumatathil

But it turned out that Nezhukumatathil’s book of essays was just what the world needed. Barnes and Noble named it the Book of the Year and ordered hundreds of thousands of copies. Critics hailed her as a unique voice in nature writing, an Asian American woman in a field dominated by white men, while readers simply pressed the book into friends’ hands, saying, “Read this.” As a result, it landed her a debut at #5 on the New York Times Bestsellers list for seven weeks.

Who was Aimee Nezhukumatathil, and why were people talking about this English professor at the University of Mississippi? Well, Nezhukumatathil is many things, but not an overnight success. She’s published hundreds of poems and four books of award-winning poetry. She is the first-ever poetry editor of SIERRA, the national magazine of the Sierra Club, the recipient of a prestigious Guggenheim fellowship, and ultimately — “kind of a nerd,” she says, adding, “A nerd obsessed with the Buckeyes.”

It was at Ohio State that Nezhukumatathil found her path. She was a junior majoring in chemistry, planning a medical career like her parents, when she took a poetry course for fun under the late Dr. David Citino. Within weeks, she’d switched her major to English. “English classes were where I felt most alive and had the most questions,” she says. “I didn’t know what I was going to do with an English degree, but I felt there had to be a place at the table for me.”

She landed a tenure track teaching job shortly after her Master of Fine Arts, and kept writing, mostly about nature, which inspired her and taught her lessons, like how to deal with racism she experienced as an Asian American and the multiple moves she made as the child of immigrant parents.