Cal Flyn

Cal Flyn is an author and journalist from the Highlands of Scotland. She writes creative nonfiction, literary criticism, and long-form journalism. Her first book, Thicker Than Water, explored the history of frontier violence in colonial Australia and questions of inherited guilt.

Her more recent book, Islands of Abandonment, looks at how nature regenerates in abandoned places, and how sites of dereliction and ruination make us feel. She is particularly interested in conservation ethics and our relationship with the natural world, and is currently working on a history of the idea of wilderness. Islands of Abandonment has been translated into 14 languages.

Cal’s journalistic writing has been published in Granta, National Geographic, The Wall Street Journal, The Sunday Times, The Economist, and elsewhere. She was made a MacDowell fellow in 2019.