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Jeff Biggers
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Jeff Biggers
Jeff Biggers (born in 1963) is an American Book Award-winning historian, journalist, playwright, novelist and monologist. He is the author and editor of twelve books. His most recent nonfiction book, In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy, is a cultural history and travelogue of the island. In the fall of 2024, he published his debut novel, Disturbing the Bones, coauthored with celebrated film director Andrew Davis. Biggers also wrote the introduction to author William Demby's classic novel on Rome, The Catacombs, in 2026.
According to Yale Climate Connection, Biggers is "a prominent author and activist writing extensively about environmental and climate issues", performing and lecturing frequently at festivals, theatres, conferences, universities and schools across the United States and Italy.
As the founder of the Climate Narrative Project, he has served as the Climate Narrative Playwright-in-Residence at Indiana University Northwest, Writer-in-Residence in the Office of Sustainability at the University of Iowa, and as the Campbell-Stripling Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan College in Georgia. As part of his climate narrative work, Biggers is the author and performer of the "Ecopolis Monologues," in which he envisions ways for regenerative city initiatives. Adapted to local initiatives and history, the Ecopolis monologues had been performed at conferences, universities and theatre venues throughout America, and in Sardinia, and Italy.
In 2008, Biggers wrote a series of articles calling for a Green New Deal. As the grandson of a coal miner from southern Illinois, Jeff Biggers has been a vocal critic of mountaintop removal in Appalachia and strip mining across the nation, poorly enforced black lung and mining workplace safety laws, and the fallacy of "clean coal" slogans. Biggers' dispatches and reports from coal mining regions around the world have been collected at the Reckoning in Appalachia website.
Biggers has been called an "itinerant storyteller" by Chicago journalist Kari Lyderson. Biggers stresses an approach of historical storytelling he calls "re-storification," the process of unearthing and forging new stories, rituals, and gatherings that recover the withered or denied strands of history and reshape its continuum between the past and present.
Focused on marginalized regions and recovering hidden histories, Biggers has written cultural histories, travel memoir and journalistic reportage based in Appalachia, the American Midwest, the US-Mexico borderlands, Mexico, India and Italy.
Published in 2006, The United States of Appalachia argues that beyond its mythology in the American imagination, Appalachia has long been a vanguard region in the United States-—a cradle of U.S. freedom and independence, and a hotbed for literature and music. Some of the most quintessential and daring American innovations, rebellions, and social movements have emerged from an area often stereotyped as a quaint backwater, he says, and in the process, immigrants from the Appalachian diaspora have become some of America's most famous leaders. The Asheville Citizen-Times reviewed it as a "masterpiece of popular history...revelations abound." One reviewer said the book is "full of historical insights...debunking stereotypes is one of the driving motivations behind Biggers' writing."
Published in 2006, In the Sierra Madre is a memoir and narrative nonfiction history that chronicles the life and times in one of the most famous, yet unknown, regions in the world. Based on his one-year sojourn among the native Rarámuri/Tarahumara of Mexico, Biggers examines the ways of a resilient indigenous culture in the Americas, the exploits of the Mexican mountaineers, and the parade of argonauts and accidental travelers that has journeyed into the Sierra Madre over centuries. From African explorers, Bohemian friars, Confederate and Irish war deserters, French poets, Boer and Russian commandos, hidden Apache and Mennonite communities, bewildered archaeologists, addled writers, and legendary characters like Antonin Artaud, B. Traven, Sergei Eisenstein, George Patton, Geronimo and Pancho Villa, Biggers searches for the legendary treasures of the Sierra Madre (Mexico's Copper Canyon). In the Sierra Madre won the gold medal in Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards (Travel Essays) in 2006, and the Illinois Arts Council Nonfiction Award. The memoir was called by Booklist "an astonishing sojourn" in 2006.
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Jeff Biggers
Jeff Biggers (born in 1963) is an American Book Award-winning historian, journalist, playwright, novelist and monologist. He is the author and editor of twelve books. His most recent nonfiction book, In Sardinia: An Unexpected Journey in Italy, is a cultural history and travelogue of the island. In the fall of 2024, he published his debut novel, Disturbing the Bones, coauthored with celebrated film director Andrew Davis. Biggers also wrote the introduction to author William Demby's classic novel on Rome, The Catacombs, in 2026.
According to Yale Climate Connection, Biggers is "a prominent author and activist writing extensively about environmental and climate issues", performing and lecturing frequently at festivals, theatres, conferences, universities and schools across the United States and Italy.
As the founder of the Climate Narrative Project, he has served as the Climate Narrative Playwright-in-Residence at Indiana University Northwest, Writer-in-Residence in the Office of Sustainability at the University of Iowa, and as the Campbell-Stripling Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan College in Georgia. As part of his climate narrative work, Biggers is the author and performer of the "Ecopolis Monologues," in which he envisions ways for regenerative city initiatives. Adapted to local initiatives and history, the Ecopolis monologues had been performed at conferences, universities and theatre venues throughout America, and in Sardinia, and Italy.
In 2008, Biggers wrote a series of articles calling for a Green New Deal. As the grandson of a coal miner from southern Illinois, Jeff Biggers has been a vocal critic of mountaintop removal in Appalachia and strip mining across the nation, poorly enforced black lung and mining workplace safety laws, and the fallacy of "clean coal" slogans. Biggers' dispatches and reports from coal mining regions around the world have been collected at the Reckoning in Appalachia website.
Biggers has been called an "itinerant storyteller" by Chicago journalist Kari Lyderson. Biggers stresses an approach of historical storytelling he calls "re-storification," the process of unearthing and forging new stories, rituals, and gatherings that recover the withered or denied strands of history and reshape its continuum between the past and present.
Focused on marginalized regions and recovering hidden histories, Biggers has written cultural histories, travel memoir and journalistic reportage based in Appalachia, the American Midwest, the US-Mexico borderlands, Mexico, India and Italy.
Published in 2006, The United States of Appalachia argues that beyond its mythology in the American imagination, Appalachia has long been a vanguard region in the United States-—a cradle of U.S. freedom and independence, and a hotbed for literature and music. Some of the most quintessential and daring American innovations, rebellions, and social movements have emerged from an area often stereotyped as a quaint backwater, he says, and in the process, immigrants from the Appalachian diaspora have become some of America's most famous leaders. The Asheville Citizen-Times reviewed it as a "masterpiece of popular history...revelations abound." One reviewer said the book is "full of historical insights...debunking stereotypes is one of the driving motivations behind Biggers' writing."
Published in 2006, In the Sierra Madre is a memoir and narrative nonfiction history that chronicles the life and times in one of the most famous, yet unknown, regions in the world. Based on his one-year sojourn among the native Rarámuri/Tarahumara of Mexico, Biggers examines the ways of a resilient indigenous culture in the Americas, the exploits of the Mexican mountaineers, and the parade of argonauts and accidental travelers that has journeyed into the Sierra Madre over centuries. From African explorers, Bohemian friars, Confederate and Irish war deserters, French poets, Boer and Russian commandos, hidden Apache and Mennonite communities, bewildered archaeologists, addled writers, and legendary characters like Antonin Artaud, B. Traven, Sergei Eisenstein, George Patton, Geronimo and Pancho Villa, Biggers searches for the legendary treasures of the Sierra Madre (Mexico's Copper Canyon). In the Sierra Madre won the gold medal in Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year Awards (Travel Essays) in 2006, and the Illinois Arts Council Nonfiction Award. The memoir was called by Booklist "an astonishing sojourn" in 2006.