Carolyn Finney

Carolyn Finney, currently an artist-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College, is a storyteller, author, and cultural geographer. A Fulbright Scholar, a Canon National Parks Science Scholar, and recipient of a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Environmental Studies, she has served on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board, and has held positions at Wellesley College, the University of California, Berkeley , as well as the University of Kentucky. Along with being the new columnist at Earth Island Journal, she was recently awarded the Alexander and Ilse Melamid Medal from the American Geographical Society. She has published pieces in BESIDE, The Guardian, and the New York Times and has essays forthcoming in the anthologies Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors (edited by Rue Mapp, November, 2022) and A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars (edited by Erin Sharkey). Her first book, Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors was released in 2014.