Place-based writing affords students an opportunity to write meaningfully about themselves, grounded in a place that they know. Place-based writing is versatile and can be additive--taking just a week or two within a semester of different projects--or transformative, if positioned as the theme for an entire course. If students can learn to write about themselves and their place on the planet, from that they can extend outward. By asking students to double back on themselves--to speak of the past and their place--students, by definition, write from positions of authority. With this authority comes agency, and with that, the willingness to make their voices heard in new genres and spaces. In this article, the author discusses four thematic features of place-based writing that he believes make it an indispensible part of a curriculum that seeks critical and environmental literacy.