Professor Mallory McDuff featured in news, webinar

March 9, 2022

Dr. Mallory McDuff is a professor of Environmental Studies and Outdoor Leadership at Warren Wilson. Her new book “Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love” is on sale now.

Years after her parents’ untimely deaths, Warren Wilson professor Dr. Mallory McDuff began a journey to revise her own final wishes with climate and community in mind. Her new book “Our Last Best Act: Planning for the End of our Lives to Protect the People and Places We Love” is a Warren Wilson and Western North Carolina story about natural burial, conservation cemeteries, aquamation, end-of-life doulas, home funerals, human composting, and poignant conversations about death and dying.

Dr. McDuff recently spoke at a webinar hosted by Warren Wilson College. Watch the webinar here. She was joined by Cassie Barrett ’08, who works as a green cemetery operator at Carolina Memorial Sanctuary, a conservation burial ground outside Asheville, NC.

Check out the recent news coverage of Dr. McDuff and “Our Last Best Act”:

Huffington Post: “I Spent A Year Researching the Best Option for Our Bodies After We Die. Here’s What I Found.”

The Washington Post:‘Green burials’ can change our relationship with death — and help the Earth

Newsweek: Whatever Happens in Glasgow, We Can Take Climate Action in Community

The Independent: Cremation and conventional burial are bad for the environment. So how do you have a green death?

Wired: How Body Farms and Human Composting Can Help Communities

Blue Ridge Public Radio: Green burials: How to combat climate change from the grave

WOUS Public Media: The changing business of death

Next Avenue: Why I Went On a One-Year Journey to Revise My Final Wishes

AVL Today: Green burial in Asheville, NC

Episcopal News Service: Episcopalians explore, embrace green burial as a final act to care for creation

Sojourners: My family’s Lenten practices prepared us for green burial