Matthew Battles

Matthew Battles is a non-fiction writer and previously served as associate director of Harvard’s metaLAB. His writing and research explores the long-term elements of cultural memory in the form of libraries and archives, and, more recently, the natural world. His book Tree explores human relations with arborescent forms of life—not only as sources of shelter, fuel, and food, but as objects of aesthetic interest, metaphors, and companions of uncanny otherness. Other writing has appeared in Orion, The American Scholar, The Atlantic, Harper’s, The New York Times, and elsewhere. Battles edits Arnoldia: the Nature of Trees for Harvard’s Arnold Arboretum.