Erik Reece

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Erik Reece is a lecturer at the University of Kentucky, teaching environmental journalism.

Reece was born & bred in Louisville, Kentucky. He has two degrees from the University of Kentucky, where he studied with Guy Davenport. His first book-length prose was a companion essay to Davenport's collection of his drawings and paintings, A Balance of Quinces. Before that, he published a collection of poems, My Muse Was Supposed to Meet Me Here, embellished by an encomium from Davenport.

Reece's 2006 book Lost Mountain: A Year in the Vanishing Wilderness (Riverhead Books), with photos by John J. Cox and a foreword by Wendell Berry, observes the effects of mountaintop removal in Appalachia (where Reece had occasionally vacationed) from October 2003 through November 2004.

An excerpt of Reece's book, the essay "Death of a Mountain," was shepherded by John Jeremiah Sullivan, who had just completed a long interview with Davenport, into the April 2005 edition of Harper's Magazine, and another excerpt appeared in The Nation in February 2006.