Bio
Maximilian Werner is an award-winning teacher and author of seven books, including the environmental novel and Utah Book Award finalist “Crooked Creek,” the memoir “Gravity Hill,” and the nonfiction monograph “Wolves, Grizzlies, and Greenhorns: Death and Coexistence in the American West.” His poems and essays have appeared in a wide array of academic and literary journals, such as The Ecological Citizen, Blaze Vox, The Robert Frost Review, The Journal of the West, Clade Song, CounterPunch, Written River: A Journal of Ecopoetics, Matter Journal: Edward Abbey Edition, Bright Lights Film Journal, The North American Review, ISLE, Weber Studies, and Columbia. He is thrilled to join the ISU community in the fall and looks forward to working with such a remarkable group of people.
Courses
English 3040: Fiction
English 5550: Nonfiction Workshop
Research Interests
Literary nonfiction; fiction; the novel; the academic novel; the essay; poetry; ecocriticism; veteran studies; film; evolutionary psychology; wildlife conflict; literary criticism; literature and the environment; screenwriting; the horror film; critical thinking; film and the American West; habitat theory; writing about war; discourse analysis; sociobiology.
Selected Publications
Books
“Wolves, Grizzlies, and Greenhorns—Death and Coexistence in the American West” (nonfiction: book) and “Black River Dreams” (essays re-printed in paperback) by Hancock House Publisher. May 2, 2021.
Creative Non-fiction/Essays/Criticism
“Sex, Violence, and Cognitive Prisons: How Ideological Epistemology Serves No One.” The Journal of Free Black Thought. (July 28, 2025).
“Trouble in Paradise: The Myth of Civilization and the Illusion of Identity in Sam Shepard’s True West.” The Journal of the West. Vol. 63, No 2. (August 2025).
“The Life Behind American Beauty.” Bright Lights Film Journal. (April 2025).
“Bigger’s Dream: Killing and Self-Preservation in Richard Wright’s Native Son.” The Journal of Free Black Thought. January 27th, 2025.
“Lyric Ghosts: Countee Cullen’s Apostrophe to Keats in “To John Keats, Poet, at Springtime.” The Journal of Free Black Thought. (January 20th, 2025).
Poetry
“Leavings: 17, 18, 19, 20” and “Shadow Work.” Eunoia Review.
“Wolf Hour,” Western Humanities Review. Vol. 76. Issue II. Summer 2026.
“Spring Thaw,” “Morning Swim, Australia, 2022,” “Progeria,” and “Sonder.” Blaze Vox.Spring 2025.
“The Off Hours” Clade Song. Issue 14. Summer 2024.
Current Research Project
(Non) Human Animal Studies: What textual accounts of wildlife conflict reveal about humanity and the prospect of coexistence