Austyn Gaffney
Austyn Gaffney (2020) is a Kentucky-based reporter and essayist focused on environmental justice, the fossil fuel industry, and the human relationship to the natural world. Since receiving her MFA from the University of Kentucky in 2018, she’s written for the Guardian, High Country News, HuffPost, In These Times, National Geographic, onEarth, Sierra, Southerly and Vice, among others. Her reporting has been supported by the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources, and a Transatlantic Media Fellowship from Heinrich Boll Stiftung. Her creative work, found in Alpinist, Blue Mesa Review, Brevity, The Offing, Pleiades and Prairie Schooner, has garnered fellowships and funding from Bread Loaf Environmental Writers Conference, Brush Creek Arts, PLAYA, the Sundress Academy for the Arts and Writing by Writers.
As a Logan fellow, Austyn will work on long-form stories, including a book project, about coal ash pollution across the U.S.