The Sowell Family Collection in
Literature, Community and the Natural World
Fall 2022 Virtual Readings
Conference, April 2023
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Other Links: Endowment Sowell Research Fellowship Student Essay Contest Sowell Blog Links of Interest  Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World contains the personal papers of some of the country's most prominent writers on the natural world. Writers in the Sowell Collection have received numerous honors including a National Book Award, a MacArthur Genius Award, Stegner Fellowships, John Burroughs Awards, and numerous awards for literary and scientific writing. Many of the writers have strong ties to Texas and their stories, essays, and poems are infused with Texas landscapes, people, birds and animals. Others have written extensively about their experiences in such far-flung places as Greenland, Egypt, Lebanon, Rwanda, Namibia, and Japan. Their topics range from cross-country skiing to canoeing and kayaking, from climate change to butterfly migration, from gardening in the desert to deer hunting in the Texas Hill country. These important American writers are deeply engaged with questions of land use and the nature of community, the conjunction of scientific and spiritual values, and the fragility of wilderness. Texas Tech University students and faculty, visiting scholars and the general public are invited to conduct research in the collection. Since 2012, this research has been showcased in the Sowell Collection's annual conference, which attracts a diverse community of presenters from the US and internationally. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19, the annual conference was not held on campus in 2020, but was replaced by a series of virtual readings. Our next on-campus conference is being planned for Spring 2022. The Sowell Collection continues to add new writers and new material to their holdings, processing over 25 collections in the past 5 years. Texas Tech University remains grateful to former TTU Regent James E. Sowell and his family for their generous support of this collection. The Sowell Family Collection in Literature, Community and the Natural World contains the personal papers of some of the country's most prominent writers on the natural world. Sowell Collection writers include:
Supporting collections
include:
Susan Tomlinson,
Ed Abbey,
Edward Hoagland,
The Richard Rowland Comanche
Pots Collection,
The Orion Society Audio
Visual Collection, and
The Stephen J. Small
Conservation Collection Recently acquired and as yet unprocessed collections include: Howard Norman, J. Drew Lanham, and Barbara Ras. Additional papers have been received from Barry Lopez. In
addition to published books,
materials available for
research purposes include
correspondence; drafts of
manuscripts; research
notebooks; diaries and
calendars; and photographs,
computer files, and film.
With this collection of
natural history writers, The
Southwest Collection/Special
Collections Library at
Finding aids for these
manuscript collections can
be found at Texas
Archival Resources Online
(TARO). For additional information, please contact: If you are a writer who would like your papers to have a home in the Sowell Collection, please send an e-mail to
Diane Warner or Kristin Loyd.
Updated Sept. 27, 2022 |