Carolyn Finney

Professor, University of California Berkeley

Carolyn Finney, PhD is a storyteller, author and a cultural geographer who is grounded in both artistic and intellectual ways of knowing - she pursued an acting career for eleven years, but five years of backpacking trips through Africa and Asia, and living in Nepal changed the course of her life. Motivated by these experiences, Carolyn returned to school after a 15-year absence to complete a B.A., M.A. (gender and environmental issues in Kenya and Nepal), and a Ph.D. in Geography at Clark University (where she was a Fulbright and a Canon National Science Scholar Fellow). Along with public speaking (nationally & internationally), writing, media engagements, consulting & teaching (she has held positions at Wellesley College, the University of California, Berkeley & the University of Kentucky), she served on the U.S. National Parks Advisory Board for eight years. Her first book, _Black Faces, White Spaces: Reimagining the Relationship of African Americans to the Great Outdoors_ was released in 2014. Recent publications include _Self-Evident: Reflections on the Invisibility of Black Bodies in Environmental Histories_ (BESIDE Magazine, Montreal Spring 2020), _The Perils of Being Black in Public: We are all Christian Cooper and George Floyd_ (The Guardian, June 3rd 2020), and _Who Gets Left Out of the Great Outdoors Story? _(The NY Times November 4 2021). Upcoming essays include “J_oy isa Revelation_” in _Nature Swagger: Stories and Visions of Black Joy in the Outdoors_ (edited by Rue Mapp, Chronicle Books, Oct. 2022) and “_Memory Divine_” in the upcoming anthology, _A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars_ (edited by Erin Sharkey, Milkweed Press, Feb. 2023). She is currently working on her new book (creative non-fiction) that takes a more personal journey into the very complicated relationship between race, land & belonging in the United States, and a performance piece entitled The N Word: Nature Revisited as part of an Andrew W. Mellon residency at the New York Botanical Gardens Humanities Institute. Along with being the new columnist at the Earth Island Journal, she was recently awarded the Alexander and Ilse Melamid Medal from the American Geographical Society and is a scholar-in-residence in the Franklin Environmental Center at Middlebury College. You can find out more about Carolyn at carolynfinney.com. Credit Photo : Nicholas Nichols