JACK NISBET was raised in North and South Carolina, where his mother helped him pin insects and his grandmother introduced him to bird songs. He moved to eastern Washington after graduating from Stanford University in 1971, and for ten years he wrote a weekly natural history column for the Chewelah Independent.
His book Sources of the River: Tracking David Thompson Across Western North America (1994) was awarded the Murray Morgan History Prize. Purple Flat Top (1997) is a collection of short stories, and Singing Grass, Burning Sage, published in association with the Nature Conservancy of Washington, won a silver medal at the ForeWords 2000 book awards.
For the past ten years, Nisbet has lived with his wife and two children in Spokane while teaching and studying human and natural history around the region.