Nathaniel Rich is the author of Cloudthief (July 2026) and three previous novels, all New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice selections: King Zeno (2018) Odds Against Tomorrow (2013) and The Mayor’s Tongue (2008). Rich’s short fiction has been published by McSweeney’s, Emergence, Esquire, Vice, the Virginia Quarterly Review, and the American Scholar; he was awarded the 2017 Emily Clark Balch Prize for Fiction and is a two-time finalist for the National Magazine Award for Fiction.
Rich is the author of two works of nonfiction on environmental themes: Second Nature (2021), which includes the story that serves as the basis for the film Dark Waters; and Losing Earth (2019), a finalist for the PEN/E.O. Wilson Literary Science Award and a winner of awards from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the American Institute of Physics. It has been published in more than a dozen languages and is currently being adapted into a film by the Oscar-winning director Tom McCarthy.
Rich is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and a frequent contributor to Harper’s and the New York Review of Books. His reported pieces have appeared in Best American Nonrequired Reading and Best American Science and Nature Writing. His translation of Primo Levi’s The Wrench appears in The Complete Works of Primo Levi.
A 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, Rich lives in New Orleans and teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at Tulane.