rasheena fountain

Rasheena Fountain is a poet and essayist whose work focuses on Black environmental memory. She is originally from Chicago but now lives in Seattle. She has been published in Hobart Pulp, Penumbra Online, Mountaineer Magazine, The Roadrunner Review, ZORA, HuffPost, Jelly Bucket and more. She has partnered with environmental organizations like the National Resource Defense Council to highlight Black stories through writing profiles about Black environmental professionals; and has worked as a digital communications manager for the Doris Duke Conservation Scholars program alumni network where she supported young environmental professionals of color as they acclimated to the environmental field. She is a former Walker Communications Fellow with the National Audubon Society. In 2018, Fountain started an online project, Climate Conscious Collabs, in response to the need for more Black environmental relationships in the media. This work has engaged a “nontraditional” environmental audience, as well as mainstream organizations like the North American Congress for Conservation Biology, which used her work during their annual conference in 2020. She has a B.A. in Rhetoric from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, an M.A. in Urban Environmental Education from Antioch University Seattle, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington Seattle. She is currently an MA/PhD student in English.

Awards: National Audubon Society Walker Communications Editorial Fellow, 2017; Outstanding Civil Service Staff Award, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2016; Illinois Community College Journalism Award, 2002; The Richard J. Dunn First-Year Teaching Award, 2020.