Austyn gaffney is a writer based in louisville, KY.
I report on environmental justice, climate change, agriculture, and the energy industry.
My journalism can be found in Grist, Guardian, High Country News, National Geographic, Oxford American, Rolling Stone, Sierra, and Vice, among many others. I cover breaking news from Kentucky for The New York Times and The Washington Post. My investigative work has won the December 2023 Sidney Award from the Sidney Hillman Foundation, and I’ve been a finalist for awards by the Deadline Club and the Southern Environmental Law Center. My comic work with collaborator Martha Park won the 2023 EPPY for Best Use of Data/Infographics by Editor & Publisher, and it was a 2023 Finalist for the Institute for Nonprofit News Insight Award for Visual Journalism. I’ve received support from the International Women’s Media Fund, Investigative Reporters and Editors, the Economic Hardship Reporting Project, the Institute of Journalism and Natural Resources, Heinrich Boll Stiftung, and the Leonard C. Goodman Institute for Investigative Reporting. I’m a member of the Society of Environmental Journalist, and I’m HEFAT certified.
My creative work, including essays, reviews, and short stories, can be found in Brevity, Ecotone, High Country News, The Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, and more. I’ve been awarded literary residencies and fellowships at the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, Brush Creek Arts, Dear Butte, PLAYA, Sundress Academy for Arts, and Writing by Writers.
In 2018, I earned my MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of Kentucky. I’ve received the Emerging Artist Award and the Al Smith Literary Arts Fellowship from the Kentucky Arts Council. I was an Editorial Fellow with Sierra Magazine, and a Logan Nonfiction Fellow at the Carey Institute for Global Good. During the 2022-2023 academic year, I was a visiting lecturer in arts and creativity at the University of Kentucky Lewis Honors College, where I taught independently designed courses on climate change journalism and nature writing.
Before becoming a freelance writer, I was an outdoor educator, a tour guide through national parks, an apprentice for vegetable and flower farms, a grocer, a florist, and a bartender. Born in Ontario, Canada and raised in Kentucky, I think a lot about the relationship between a nickel smelter and a lighthouse in northern Ontario.