Gretchen has taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels for the better part of two decades. She has served on the faculties at Georgetown University, University of Utah, MIT, Knox College, University of Missouri-Columbia, Barnard College's Center for Research on Women, Kenyon Review Writers Workshop, and elsewhere, and is frequently invited as a visiting writer/artist/scholar. With writing at the core of her practice, she has taught in departments of English, Creative Writing, Comparative Media Studies, Art History, Museum Studies, Environmental Humanities, and currently is Senior Lecturer in the Steve Hicks School of Social Work at The University of Texas at Austin. Her classes often go beyond the classroom. Her class field trips have ranged from the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and other museums and studios in Boston, to the National Gallery of Art and National Press Club in Washington, DC, to the Utah Museums of Natural History and Art (including Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels in remote western Utah), to state parks in the Sierra Nevada of California, and countries throughout Europe, along with concerts, literary readings, and theatrical performances.

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"Writing the Landscape" is back!

Oak Spring Garden Foundation

The Oak Spring Garden Foundation (the former estate of Paul and Rachel Mellon near the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia) is offering a residential short course based at Oak Spring on "Writing the Landscape" in Spring and Fall 2023 (April 24-28 and October 16-20). The seminar will be taught by Gretchen Henderson and, in addition to environmental writing, will explore how OSGF's celebrated rare books Library intersects the estate's 700-acres of renowned Garden and Biocultural Conservation Farm. Guests will include OSGF's founding president, Sir Peter Crane, who was formerly Director of the Field Museum in Chicago, Director of the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew (UK), and Dean of Yale's School of Forestry and Environmental Studies.