2000s
- Guggenheim Fellowship 2015-16 for essay collection “Lament for the Makers”
- “Spotted Hyena” essay selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2015 (editor Rebecca Skloot)
- Residency, The Hermitage Artist’s retreat, Englewood, FL, 2014 & 2015
- “The Rabbit on Mars” essay selected for Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007 (editor Richard Preston)
- Residency, H.J. Andrews Experimental Forest (2006)
- Residency Sitka Center for Art and Ecology, Otis, Oregon (2003)
- Residency, Mesa Refuge (2002)
- Winter Residency, Djerassi Resident Artists Program (2001 and 2005)
1990s
- Bayer Award in Science Writing from Creative Nonfiction (1998)
- Residency, National Writers Voice Project, Scottsdale, Arizona (1995)
- Residency, Hawthornden International Retreat for Writers, Edinburgh, Scotland (1994)
- Fellowship, Arizona Commission on the Arts (1995)
- Walt Whitman Award from the Academy of American Poets (1993)
- Pushcart Prize (1993)
- Tucson-Pima Arts Council Fellowship (1993)
- Gertrude B. Claytor Memorial Award, Poetry Society of America (1992)
- Residency, Yaddo (1992)
- Residency, The Island Institute, Sitka, Alaska (1992)
- Residency, Djeraasi Resident Artists Program (1990)
- Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts (1990 and 1995)
1980s
- Wallace Stegner Fellowship, Stanford University (1987-88)
- Residency, Cummington Community for the Arts (1985)
- Fellowship, Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown (1984-85)
- Pablo Neruda Prize from Nimrod (1983)