Stephen Trimble was born in Denver, his family's base for roaming the West with his geologist father. After a liberal arts education at Colorado College, he worked as a park ranger in Colorado and Utah, earned a master’s degree in ecology at the University of Arizona, served as director of the Museum of Northern Arizona Press, and for five years lived near Santa Fe, New Mexico. He has been a full-time free-lance writer and photographer since 1981.

Trimble has received significant awards for his photography, his non-fiction, and his fiction—and the breadth of those awards mirrors the wide embrace of his work: The Sierra Club's Ansel Adams Award for photography and conservation; The National Cowboy Museum’s Western Heritage “Wrangler” Award; and a Doctor of Humane Letters from his alma mater, Colorado College, honoring his efforts to increase our understanding of Western landscapes and peoples and his choice to remain a stubborn generalist. Environmental historian James Aton has said that Trimble’s “books comprise one of the most well-rounded, sustained, and profound visions of people and landscape that we have ever seen in the American West.”

As writer, editor, and photographer Trimble has published twenty books. His bedrock focus is the land —western wildlands and natural history— including:
Lasting Light: 125 Years of Grand Canyon Photography
The Geography of Childhood: Why Children Need Wild Places (with Gary Nabhan)
The Sagebrush Ocean: A Natural History of the Great Basin
Earthtones: A Nevada Album (with Ann Ronald)
Blessed By Light: Visions of the Colorado Plateau
Words From the Land: Encounters with Natural History Writing.
Trimble spent ten years listening to Southwest Indian people, and their stories fill his books:
The People: Indians of the American Southwest
Talking With the Clay: the Art of Pueblo Pottery
Our Voices, Our Land

He also contributes commentaries to local and national NPR shows, especially “The Savvy Traveler.”
Trimble co-compiled (with Terry Tempest Williams) a landmark effort by writers hoping to sway public policy: Testimony: Writers of the West Speak on Behalf of Utah Wilderness. On March 27, 1996, Senator Russell Feingold (D-WI) read Trimble’s essay from Testimony, “Our Gardens, Our Canyons,” on the floor of the United States Senate during his plea to protect Utah wilderness. He concluded with, “That short piece of writing is so powerful…because it is a timeless statement about how people feel about natural places.”

Trimble makes his home in Salt Lake City and in the redrock country of Torrey, Utah, with his wife and two children. From his attic studio in the city, he looks out on the Great Basin and Wasatch Mountains, writes at his grandfather's desk, and manages his stock photography business.